[CentOS] Hardware Raid cards RAID 0 / 1
Aleksandar Milivojevic
alex at milivojevic.org
Wed Jul 12 03:32:47 UTC 2006
Chris Heiner wrote:
> We are very familiar with Adaptec as their headquarters are here in
> California and we used them exclusively back in our Novell / NT / SCSI days.
>
> Showing my age.
>
> The Marvell Sata is actually an AIC 8130, I wasn't aware of it until I did a
Ah, now I know exactly what you have. First of all, you do not have
RAID card. It's just fake-RAID thing in BIOS that makes you think you
got a RAID card, but in reality it is just an ordinary plain SATA
controller and the RAID stuff is done in software by device driver.
Exactly the same as using plain SATA controller in Linux and configuring
software RAID using md meta devices. I remember having one of those in
some SuperMicro servers.
Currently there's no device driver for Marvell chipset in CentOS kernel.
Apprently there is some support for those (sata_mv driver) in latest
and greatest vanilla kernels (visit www.kernel.org). When it becomes
stable, it'll probably be backported to RHEL4 and therefore CentOS.
You have several options until than. You could try compiling and using
latest kernel from kernel.org. Or you could spend couple of dollars and
buy some cheap (but supported) SATA controller (AIC 8130 is not an RAID
controller at all, it's a fake, so you are not loosing anything by going
that route, simply configure good old Linux software RAID if you need
mirroring or something like that).
If you really want/need real hardware RAID thing, you'd need to buy
3ware or Adaptec (watch out, unlike 3ware, not all Adaptecs are real
hardware stuff, some of them are fake-RAID). Trust me, that Windows
thing you installed on the box is just running on top of software RAID.
It's conveniently hidden from you by BIOS and by device driver, but
that is what in reality it is.
You can also check if the motherboard has another SATA controller on it.
For example, the SuperMicros that I had came with hard drive bays
wired to 4-port Marvell controller (AIC-8130). However, there were also
two additional ports on the motherboard controlled by Intel's SATA
controller (integrated into chipset). Since I had only two drives
anyhow, I just moved the cables to the Intel's ports. Since most
chipsets nowdays have integrated SATA contoller, there's good chance you
already have SATA controller supported by CentOS kernel in the box.
It's only the question if HP bothered to solder the connectors for that
controller onto motherboard (SuperMicro did). If there are connectors
for the integrated SATA controller, simply move the cables to them.
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