I've got two drives from a now-dead server, they were RAIDed, a mirror, I'd assume. I need to see if there's anything on them I need to transfer to the replacement, so I just shoved them into another Dell server, with a PERC 5 controller - I think that's what the dead one had. I fired up MegaRAID storage manager... but can't see any way to tell it to recreate that RAID. Anyone done this?
mark
On Nov 29, 2011 1:36 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
I've got two drives from a now-dead server, they were RAIDed, a mirror, I'd assume. I need to see if there's anything on them I need to transfer to the replacement, so I just shoved them into another Dell server, with a PERC 5 controller - I think that's what the dead one had. I fired up MegaRAID storage manager... but can't see any way to tell it to recreate that RAID. Anyone done this?
mark
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't MSM for LSI/3ware cards?
If the drives didn't come off a PERC, you probably can't recreate the array on a PERC - I'm sure you know this, but it's worth verification.
Pete Travis wrote:
On Nov 29, 2011 1:36 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
I've got two drives from a now-dead server, they were RAIDed, a mirror, I'd assume. I need to see if there's anything on them I need to transfer to the replacement, so I just shoved them into another Dell server, with a PERC 5 controller - I think that's what the dead one had. I fired up MegaRAID storage manager... but can't see any way to tell it to recreate that RAID. Anyone done this?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't MSM for LSI/3ware cards?
Right, and Dell's PERC is an OEM-rebranded LSI controller. MSM understands them fine.
Of course, I don't seem to have the command line tool, and when I click on Go To, and try controller, everything is greyed out. <snip>
mark
On Nov 29, 2011 1:50 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Pete Travis wrote:
On Nov 29, 2011 1:36 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
I've got two drives from a now-dead server, they were RAIDed, a mirror, I'd assume. I need to see if there's anything on them I need to
transfer
to the replacement, so I just shoved them into another Dell server,
with
a PERC 5 controller - I think that's what the dead one had. I fired up MegaRAID storage manager... but can't see any way to tell it to
recreate
that RAID. Anyone done this?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't MSM for LSI/3ware cards?
Right, and Dell's PERC is an OEM-rebranded LSI controller. MSM understands them fine.
Of course, I don't seem to have the command line tool, and when I click on Go To, and try controller, everything is greyed out.
<snip>
mark
I thought I might be pointing out the obvious .... I'll be on front of a box with MSM later, will take a look.
_______________________________________________
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Nov 29, 2011, at 1:35 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
I've got two drives from a now-dead server, they were RAIDed, a mirror, I'd assume. I need to see if there's anything on them I need to transfer to the replacement, so I just shoved them into another Dell server, with a PERC 5 controller - I think that's what the dead one had. I fired up MegaRAID storage manager... but can't see any way to tell it to recreate that RAID. Anyone done this?
---- I wouldn't waste the time with MSM - I would simply use the BIOS configuration for the RAID storage which can easily look at the drives for RAID configuration and load it if it can find it.
That said, I would suspect that the RAID controllers would have to be identical
Craig
Craig White wrote:
On Nov 29, 2011, at 1:35 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
I've got two drives from a now-dead server, they were RAIDed, a mirror, I'd assume. I need to see if there's anything on them I need to transfer to the replacement, so I just shoved them into another Dell server, with a PERC 5 controller - I think that's what the dead one had. I fired up MegaRAID storage manager... but can't see any way to tell it to recreate that RAID. Anyone done this?
I wouldn't waste the time with MSM - I would simply use the BIOS configuration for the RAID storage which can easily look at the drives for RAID configuration and load it if it can find it.
Sorry, let me give my conditions a bit more: I don't think I can reboot the server - I believe it's currently in use as a development machine by one of the teams, so I can't play around with it.
That said, I would suspect that the RAID controllers would have to be identical
I believe it's the same kind of controller, so that's ok. I'm using MSM for the above reasons, and that the cli isn't installed.
Playing with this thing, I believe I want to create another drive group, not just add another RAID to an existing one, which just seems as though it could get really ugly. But when I click on the controller, I can then get to "Go To" -> controller, which will let me create a new virtual drive, but drive group is all greyed out still. Further, I don't see anything that would let me investigate what the documentation seems to call a "foreign RAID".
Hope that gives y'all a better picture of my environment.
mark
On Nov 29, 2011, at 2:09 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Craig White wrote:
On Nov 29, 2011, at 1:35 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
I've got two drives from a now-dead server, they were RAIDed, a mirror, I'd assume. I need to see if there's anything on them I need to transfer to the replacement, so I just shoved them into another Dell server, with a PERC 5 controller - I think that's what the dead one had. I fired up MegaRAID storage manager... but can't see any way to tell it to recreate that RAID. Anyone done this?
I wouldn't waste the time with MSM - I would simply use the BIOS configuration for the RAID storage which can easily look at the drives for RAID configuration and load it if it can find it.
Sorry, let me give my conditions a bit more: I don't think I can reboot the server - I believe it's currently in use as a development machine by one of the teams, so I can't play around with it.
That said, I would suspect that the RAID controllers would have to be identical
I believe it's the same kind of controller, so that's ok. I'm using MSM for the above reasons, and that the cli isn't installed.
Playing with this thing, I believe I want to create another drive group, not just add another RAID to an existing one, which just seems as though it could get really ugly. But when I click on the controller, I can then get to "Go To" -> controller, which will let me create a new virtual drive, but drive group is all greyed out still. Further, I don't see anything that would let me investigate what the documentation seems to call a "foreign RAID".
Hope that gives y'all a better picture of my environment.
---- let me see if I get this right... you don't want to play around with a server that's in production now but you are perfectly willing to play around with a server that's in production mode as long as it doesn't involve rebooting?
I think you have a strange notion of safe things to do with a live production server.
Craig
Craig White wrote:
On Nov 29, 2011, at 2:09 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Craig White wrote:
On Nov 29, 2011, at 1:35 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
I've got two drives from a now-dead server, they were RAIDed, a mirror, I'd assume. I need to see if there's anything on them I need to transfer to the replacement, so I just shoved them into another Dell server, with a PERC 5 controller - I think that's what the dead one had. I fired up MegaRAID storage manager... but can't see any way to tell it to recreate that RAID. Anyone done this?
I wouldn't waste the time with MSM - I would simply use the BIOS configuration for the RAID storage which can easily look at the drives for RAID configuration and load it if it can find it.
Sorry, let me give my conditions a bit more: I don't think I can reboot the server - I believe it's currently in use as a development machine by one of the teams, so I can't play around with it.
<snip>
Playing with this thing, I believe I want to create another drive group, not just add another RAID to an existing one, which just seems as though it could get really ugly. But when I click on the controller, I can then get to "Go To" -> controller, which will let me create a new virtual drive, but drive group is all greyed out still. Further, I don't see anything that would let me investigate what the documentation seems to call a "foreign RAID".
Hope that gives y'all a better picture of my environment.
let me see if I get this right... you don't want to play around with a server that's in production now but you are perfectly willing to play around with a server that's in production mode as long as it doesn't involve rebooting?
A development server that's in use is not a production server. Those are visible to the world. I don't think it's unreasonable to go in, add a drive group, add these drives to the group, and have it rediscover them and present them to me. Why is that not a safe thing? Other than the rediscover the RAID, it's no different than shoving an ordinary drive into one of the hot swap bays and mounting it under /mnt. <snip> mark
On 11/29/2011 09:09 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
I wouldn't waste the time with MSM - I would simply use the BIOS configuration for the RAID storage which can easily look at the drives for RAID configuration and load it if it can find it.
If you haveto reboot to get to your storage, might as well have skipped the entire process of investing in something that has management.
I believe it's the same kind of controller, so that's ok. I'm using MSM for the above reasons, and that the cli isn't installed.
the MegaCli is a pain to use, its the craziest bit of software I've come across in a long long time. However, it does work and is very reliable in its feedback.
anything that would let me investigate what the documentation seems to call a "foreign RAID".
it just means the disks have raid metadata on there which does not map to an existing radiset on your machine. You should (1) mark the disk as bad (2) clear the metadata on there (3) mark is good again (4) pull it into an existing raidset. Make sure you check and adjust your rebuild rates to match what is going on with the machine, these cards have it set to 30% resource by default.
HTH
- KB
on 11/29/2011 12:35 PM m.roth@5-cent.us spake the following:
I've got two drives from a now-dead server, they were RAIDed, a mirror, I'd assume. I need to see if there's anything on them I need to transfer to the replacement, so I just shoved them into another Dell server, with a PERC 5 controller - I think that's what the dead one had. I fired up MegaRAID storage manager... but can't see any way to tell it to recreate that RAID. Anyone done this?
mark
If they were mirrored, you should just be able to mount one and see what you can find. If they were striped, then you would need a controller
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of m.roth@5-cent.us Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2011 15:36 To: CentOS mailing list Subject: [CentOS] megaraid/PERC
I've got two drives from a now-dead server, they were RAIDed, a
mirror,
I'd assume. I need to see if there's anything on them I need to transfer to the replacement, so I just shoved them into another Dell server, with a PERC 5 controller - I think that's what the dead one had. I fired up MegaRAID storage manager... but can't see any way to tell it to recreate that RAID. Anyone done this?
Recent experience indicates... if the machine had any kind of warranty with Dell, an authorized owner/technician should call Dell before doing ANYTHING more with the drives.
<use this info at your own risk> With the dell system I was working with, I was walked through booting into the raid controller software (bios level prior to OS boot) and having THAT reassemble the array. </use this info at your own risk>
--On Tuesday, November 29, 2011 3:35 PM -0500 m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Dell server
Dell has a fairly active Linux server mailing list. You might want to copy your question there:
On Nov 29, 2011, at 3:35 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
I've got two drives from a now-dead server, they were RAIDed, a mirror, I'd assume. I need to see if there's anything on them I need to transfer to the replacement, so I just shoved them into another Dell server, with a PERC 5 controller - I think that's what the dead one had. I fired up MegaRAID storage manager... but can't see any way to tell it to recreate that RAID. Anyone done this?
Probably old news now, but in the PERC card's BIOS you want to import foreign config, save it and restart.
-Ross
Ross Walker wrote:
On Nov 29, 2011, at 3:35 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
I've got two drives from a now-dead server, they were RAIDed, a mirror, I'd assume. I need to see if there's anything on them I need to transfer to the replacement, so I just shoved them into another Dell server, with a PERC 5 controller - I think that's what the dead one had. I fired up MegaRAID storage manager... but can't see any way to tell it to recreate that RAID. Anyone done this?
Probably old news now, but in the PERC card's BIOS you want to import foreign config, save it and restart.
No, it's not old news - thanks! Btw, do you know if it's even possible to do that via the MSM gui? I don't see anything like that in the menus.
mark
Ross Walker wrote:
On Nov 29, 2011, at 3:35 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
I've got two drives from a now-dead server, they were RAIDed, a mirror, I'd assume. I need to see if there's anything on them I need to transfer to the replacement, so I just shoved them into another Dell server, with a PERC 5 controller - I think that's what the dead one had. I fired up MegaRAID storage manager... but can't see any way to tell it to recreate that RAID. Anyone done this?
Probably old news now, but in the PERC card's BIOS you want to import foreign config, save it and restart.
Ok, no one else was using one of the two I have available (most are now surplussed, so there's only a few left in service) is not being used at the moment, so I rebooted, and went into the firmware. Foreign was greyed out, unreachable, no matter what I did.
We're probably writing the drives off - there *shouldn't* be anything to be recovered on them, but I was just tryin' to be sure....
For my own amusement, I installed MegaCli 4, and am trying to puzzle my way through the lack of documentation, only the output of MegaCLI64 -?....
mark
On Nov 30, 2011, at 1:39 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Ross Walker wrote:
On Nov 29, 2011, at 3:35 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
I've got two drives from a now-dead server, they were RAIDed, a mirror, I'd assume. I need to see if there's anything on them I need to transfer to the replacement, so I just shoved them into another Dell server, with a PERC 5 controller - I think that's what the dead one had. I fired up MegaRAID storage manager... but can't see any way to tell it to recreate that RAID. Anyone done this?
Probably old news now, but in the PERC card's BIOS you want to import foreign config, save it and restart.
Ok, no one else was using one of the two I have available (most are now surplussed, so there's only a few left in service) is not being used at the moment, so I rebooted, and went into the firmware. Foreign was greyed out, unreachable, no matter what I did.
We're probably writing the drives off - there *shouldn't* be anything to be recovered on them, but I was just tryin' to be sure....
It may be the drives were software mirrored? Or maybe mirrored with a different controller like a PERC 'i' which works differently then the 'e' controllers.
I have heard of people setting their PERCs in pass-through mode and doing software RAID, or setting the drives up as a bunch of single disk RAID0 drives and doing software RAID, so I wouldn't rule it out.
See if there is a partition table on the disks or a whole disk LVM VG.
For my own amusement, I installed MegaCli 4, and am trying to puzzle my way through the lack of documentation, only the output of MegaCLI64 -?....
The MegaCli is the most archaic utility.
I have a storage server in one of my datacenters that has a PERC 6i and two PERC 6e controllers and I use a combination of MSM framework and MegaCli to manage it.
I'll do an rpm dump when I get a chance and list the Dell/LSI packages installed.
-Ross
On Wednesday, November 30, 2011 06:40:44 PM Ross Walker wrote:
I have heard of people setting their PERCs in pass-through mode and doing software RAID, or setting the drives up as a bunch of single disk RAID0 drives and doing software RAID, so I wouldn't rule it out.
FWIW, I've done this in testing, and for a two-socket dual-core Dell PE 2850 we have here, the Linux software RAID was substantially faster than the PERC (U320 SCSI) built-in RAID. Speed was checked with bonnie++ while the box was normally loaded.
In both cases, CentOS 5 was the OS installed.
YMMV.
On Dec 1, 2011, at 7:52 AM, Lamar Owen wrote:
On Wednesday, November 30, 2011 06:40:44 PM Ross Walker wrote:
I have heard of people setting their PERCs in pass-through mode and doing software RAID, or setting the drives up as a bunch of single disk RAID0 drives and doing software RAID, so I wouldn't rule it out.
FWIW, I've done this in testing, and for a two-socket dual-core Dell PE 2850 we have here, the Linux software RAID was substantially faster than the PERC (U320 SCSI) built-in RAID. Speed was checked with bonnie++ while the box was normally loaded.
In both cases, CentOS 5 was the OS installed.
YMMV.
---- I think the actual controller might make a difference and also details such as whether/how much write back cache was available and also, which RAID level would likely be significant too. Almost guessing that you were talking about a PERC 3/Di.
Craig
On Thursday, December 01, 2011 10:08:27 AM Craig White wrote:
I think the actual controller might make a difference and also details such as whether/how much write back cache was available and also, which RAID level would likely be significant too. Almost guessing that you were talking about a PERC 3/Di.
Hmmm, no, I think it's a PERC 4 of some series. I don't recall if it's a 4e or a 4Di. It's built in to the PCI-X riser and it's dual channel, though. Probably an e.
256MB of cache if I remember correctly; using the service tag # and checking Dell's original system config tool tells me that's correct (the config tool just says a RAID key installed, and documentation for a PERC 4e/Di/Si; I don't recall if the e was the on-riser or if the i was right off hand, and the config tool doesn't tell me either).
Six drives: two 72GB 15k in RAID 1, four 146GB 15k in RAID5. MDRAID beat the PERC4 on both logical drives, set up as identically as possible.
*sigh*
After all that, I found one of our R905's is basically not in use at the moment, so, fine, I umounted a couple of data drives, pulled them, and plunked what I *thought* was a RAID.
And saw partitions, this time - dunno why I didn't see them on the other box. fdisk... and the damn things are LVM.
So, I've done pgscan, vgscan, see the group name, tried vgchange --mknod, but the groups aren't active, nor is there a VolGroup directory created down in /dev. Anyone know what I've missed?
mark
On Thursday, December 01, 2011 01:53:59 PM m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
So, I've done pgscan, vgscan, see the group name, tried vgchange --mknod, but the groups aren't active, nor is there a VolGroup directory created down in /dev. Anyone know what I've missed?
vgchange -ay perhaps?
Lamar Owen wrote:
On Thursday, December 01, 2011 01:53:59 PM m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
So, I've done pgscan, vgscan, see the group name, tried vgchange --mknod, but the groups aren't active, nor is there a VolGroup directory created down in /dev. Anyone know what I've missed?
vgchange -ay perhaps?
Sorry if I wasn't clear - tried that, a number of times. Oh, well, we decided yesterday afternoon that we had some idea of what was on it, given the volume name (basically, nothing worth saving), and my manager felt we were spending way too much time on this, and so I shredded the disks.
Thanks for everyone's thoughts and help - it was a truly annoying pain, though I did learn a good bit from folks' suggestions about recovering RAID and lvm.
mark
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