Got a new box I'm trying to set up. I configured the RAID from the firmware, but "fast initialize" was sitting there at 0% (it's about 43 or 45TB). The first time I tried this, I said background, and rebooted the system.
And the stupid annoying alarm started up as the system came up.
This time, having *finally* figured out how to set up hot spares from the WebBIOS, I suspended the fast initialization, and brought the system up.
Googling, I can't find a command to continue the initialization. Anyone know of one, or is what I want to do rebuild the RAID?
mark
On 5/6/2016 11:36 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Got a new box I'm trying to set up. I configured the RAID from the firmware, but "fast initialize" was sitting there at 0% (it's about 43 or 45TB). The first time I tried this, I said background, and rebooted the system.
And the stupid annoying alarm started up as the system came up.
This time, having*finally* figured out how to set up hot spares from the WebBIOS, I suspended the fast initialization, and brought the system up.
Googling, I can't find a command to continue the initialization. Anyone know of one, or is what I want to do rebuild the RAID?
MegaCli64, which has to be installed.
the command lines are awful.
John R Pierce wrote:
On 5/6/2016 11:36 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Got a new box I'm trying to set up. I configured the RAID from the firmware, but "fast initialize" was sitting there at 0% (it's about 43 or 45TB). The first time I tried this, I said background, and rebooted the system.
And the stupid annoying alarm started up as the system came up.
This time, having*finally* figured out how to set up hot spares from the WebBIOS, I suspended the fast initialization, and brought the system up.
Googling, I can't find a command to continue the initialization. Anyone know of one, or is what I want to do rebuild the RAID?
MegaCli64, which has to be installed.
That's what I'm using.
the command lines are awful.
!$ += 500
mark
Dear Experts,
one of the RAID threads today prompted me ask everybody.
Which internal hardware RAID controllers will survive some future to come in your estimate. First of all my beloved 3ware finally seems to have passed away. After multiple acquisitions and becoming part of LSI and getting bought with LSI, it probably became non operational. Namely, the latest 3ware cards have ancient firmware. Neither of them supports 4kn drives. This speaks for itself for me. [Under new ownership] LSI, though still having new controllers released, and one of their MegaRAID controllers (at least) having support for 4kn drives, still may not last long (just my feeling, I'd like to hear yours). So, what RAID controllers will those of us who like to have hardware RAIDs use in some future to come?
Valeri
PS I didn't mention Areca (I only have 2 or 3 their cards in my boxes), which seems to have firmware update that supports 4kn drives. Is Areca our future hardware RAID hardware?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On 5/6/2016 2:26 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
Which internal hardware RAID controllers will survive some future to come in your estimate. First of all my beloved 3ware finally seems to have passed away. After multiple acquisitions and becoming part of LSI and getting bought with LSI, it probably became non operational. Namely, the latest 3ware cards have ancient firmware. Neither of them supports 4kn drives. This speaks for itself for me. [Under new ownership] LSI, though still having new controllers released, and one of their MegaRAID controllers (at least) having support for 4kn drives, still may not last long (just my feeling, I'd like to hear yours). So, what RAID controllers will those of us who like to have hardware RAIDs use in some future to come?
IMHO, "Hardware" (really embedded firmware) RAID is for Windows servers, since MS Windows has awful integrated software raid (aka 'dynamic disk', truly a mess). With Linux, I'd rather use LVM, with BSD, ZFS.
On 08/05/16 08:12 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 5/6/2016 2:26 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
Which internal hardware RAID controllers will survive some future to come in your estimate. First of all my beloved 3ware finally seems to have passed away. After multiple acquisitions and becoming part of LSI and getting bought with LSI, it probably became non operational. Namely, the latest 3ware cards have ancient firmware. Neither of them supports 4kn drives. This speaks for itself for me. [Under new ownership] LSI, though still having new controllers released, and one of their MegaRAID controllers (at least) having support for 4kn drives, still may not last long (just my feeling, I'd like to hear yours). So, what RAID controllers will those of us who like to have hardware RAIDs use in some future to come?
IMHO, "Hardware" (really embedded firmware) RAID is for Windows servers, since MS Windows has awful integrated software raid (aka 'dynamic disk', truly a mess). With Linux, I'd rather use LVM, with BSD, ZFS.
"Hardware RAID" can very well include a controller with dedicated parity processing, battery/flash backed write caching and other tangible benefits.
On 5/8/2016 5:31 PM, Digimer wrote:
"Hardware RAID" can very well include a controller with dedicated parity processing, battery/flash backed write caching and other tangible benefits.
Yes, battery/flash write-back cache provides some performance benefit in write intensive workloads. but all that parity processing? your x86_64 server processor is far faster than the typical few 100Mhz MIPS/ARM sort of CPU they embed on those controllers, and can easily keep up in realtime, and I'd far rather have the OS native volume manager open source managing the physical volumes than some black box firmware.
On Sun, May 8, 2016 7:55 pm, John R Pierce wrote:
On 5/8/2016 5:31 PM, Digimer wrote:
"Hardware RAID" can very well include a controller with dedicated parity processing, battery/flash backed write caching and other tangible benefits.
Yes, battery/flash write-back cache provides some performance benefit in write intensive workloads. but all that parity processing? your x86_64 server processor is far faster than the typical few 100Mhz MIPS/ARM sort of CPU they embed on those controllers, and can easily keep up in realtime, and I'd far rather have the OS native volume manager open source managing the physical volumes than some black box firmware.
John, if you want to have discussion of benefits of Linux software RAID vs hardware RAID cards, could you start new thread dedicated for that. That topic is interesting, and may help some folks in their decisions, and I may add some arguments/thoughts to that discussion on one of the sides, or on both. Or maybe not, as I did it already in similar discussion on this same list a year or two ago. Can we leave this thread just to thoughts I solicited about which of hardware RAID card manufacturers will still exists in close future.
Thanks for your consideration.
Valeri
john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On 5/8/2016 6:10 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
Can we leave this thread just to thoughts I solicited about which of hardware RAID card manufacturers will still exists in close future.
predicting the future? yeah, well.
there are really only two choices today, Adaptec and Avago (formerly LSI, they also control the former Areca product line). I've not been very happy with the level of support Avago is offeriong for older products, and I've *never* liked Adaptec. Whoops, Avago is now Broadcom, a company I like even less for broken closed source firmware and total lack of hardware documentation.
There's a pile of 2nd tier players like Promise, and so forth, I won't touch these with a 10 foot pole.
On Sun, May 8, 2016 8:20 pm, John R Pierce wrote:
On 5/8/2016 6:10 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
Can we leave this thread just to thoughts I solicited about which of hardware RAID card manufacturers will still exists in close future.
predicting the future? yeah, well.
there are really only two choices today, Adaptec and Avago (formerly LSI, they also control the former Areca product line). I've not been very happy with the level of support Avago is offeriong for older products, and I've *never* liked Adaptec. Whoops, Avago is now Broadcom, a company I like even less for broken closed source firmware and total lack of hardware documentation.
There's a pile of 2nd tier players like Promise, and so forth, I won't touch these with a 10 foot pole.
John, thanks for your insights! I could not even imagine that my feelings would be the same about virtually everything... (and this pessimism prompted me to ask others, but I still hope to hear something optimistic).
Anybody else, anything..?
Valeri
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On 05/08/2016 06:20 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
there are really only two choices today, Adaptec and Avago (formerly LSI, they also control the former Areca product line).
I don't believe that is correct. LSI acquired 3ware, and Avago acquired LSI. So, Avago owns the 3ware and LSI technology, but Adaptec and Areca are still competitors.
Whoops, Avago is now Broadcom, a company I like even less for broken closed source firmware and total lack of hardware documentation.
If it makes you feel any better, Avago acquired Broadcom, not the other way around. I would expect Avago's culture to be the dominant one, and watch for changes in Broadcom's firmware and documentation practices.
On Mon, May 9, 2016 11:12 am, Gordon Messmer wrote:
On 05/08/2016 06:20 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
there are really only two choices today, Adaptec and Avago (formerly LSI, they also control the former Areca product line).
I don't believe that is correct. LSI acquired 3ware, and Avago acquired LSI. So, Avago owns the 3ware and LSI technology, but Adaptec and Areca are still competitors.
Whoops, Avago is now Broadcom, a company I like even less for broken closed source firmware and total lack of hardware documentation.
If it makes you feel any better, Avago acquired Broadcom, not the other way around. I would expect Avago's culture to be the dominant one, and watch for changes in Broadcom's firmware and documentation practices.
Sounds good. I've heard good predictions about LSI (most notably by Digimer and John, and now Gordon sounds really encouraging). How about Areca? They seem to have support for 4kn drives, are they going to be another option for us, hardware RAID people? Their creatures were pretty good so far in my book...
<rant> I do my best to stay away from those who ever released "fakeraid" chips (or "software RAID"), the ones relying of "driver" (read: your system and CPU processing RAID functions). Meaning here adaptec ;-( If I were to do RAID without dedicated RAID card, just export me the drives, and my system has all necessary for that. </rant>
Thanks a lot for all your insights!
Valeri
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On Sun, May 8, 2016 7:31 pm, Digimer wrote:
On 08/05/16 08:12 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 5/6/2016 2:26 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
Which internal hardware RAID controllers will survive some future to come in your estimate. First of all my beloved 3ware finally seems to have passed away. After multiple acquisitions and becoming part of LSI and getting bought with LSI, it probably became non operational. Namely, the latest 3ware cards have ancient firmware. Neither of them supports 4kn drives. This speaks for itself for me. [Under new ownership] LSI, though still having new controllers released, and one of their MegaRAID controllers (at least) having support for 4kn drives, still may not last long (just my feeling, I'd like to hear yours). So, what RAID controllers will those of us who like to have hardware RAIDs use in some future to come?
IMHO, "Hardware" (really embedded firmware) RAID is for Windows servers, since MS Windows has awful integrated software raid (aka 'dynamic disk', truly a mess). With Linux, I'd rather use LVM, with BSD, ZFS.
"Hardware RAID" can very well include a controller with dedicated parity processing, battery/flash backed write caching and other tangible benefits.
Right, by "hardware RAID" as opposed to a bit more often used term "software RAID" I did mean the card that has RAID processing done by the chip on board of the card (parity or in other words modulus 2 sum in case of RAID-5, and more sophisticated math in case of RAID-6 - I have heard of at least two algorithms suitable for RAID-6). Thanks, Mr. Digimer, for clarifying my somewhat vague in this place post.
Any insight, anybody, which hardware RAID cards of rather which manufacturers of these cards will still make them in a future (say next 5 years)? Even if you just have feelings, without any thought why, I would like to hear them. If you prefer to answer off the list, please, e-mail me directly at galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu
Thanks a lot!
Valeri
-- Digimer Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.ca/w/ What if the cure for cancer is trapped in the mind of a person without access to education? _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On 08/05/16 09:02 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
On Sun, May 8, 2016 7:31 pm, Digimer wrote:
On 08/05/16 08:12 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 5/6/2016 2:26 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
Which internal hardware RAID controllers will survive some future to come in your estimate. First of all my beloved 3ware finally seems to have passed away. After multiple acquisitions and becoming part of LSI and getting bought with LSI, it probably became non operational. Namely, the latest 3ware cards have ancient firmware. Neither of them supports 4kn drives. This speaks for itself for me. [Under new ownership] LSI, though still having new controllers released, and one of their MegaRAID controllers (at least) having support for 4kn drives, still may not last long (just my feeling, I'd like to hear yours). So, what RAID controllers will those of us who like to have hardware RAIDs use in some future to come?
IMHO, "Hardware" (really embedded firmware) RAID is for Windows servers, since MS Windows has awful integrated software raid (aka 'dynamic disk', truly a mess). With Linux, I'd rather use LVM, with BSD, ZFS.
"Hardware RAID" can very well include a controller with dedicated parity processing, battery/flash backed write caching and other tangible benefits.
Right, by "hardware RAID" as opposed to a bit more often used term "software RAID" I did mean the card that has RAID processing done by the chip on board of the card (parity or in other words modulus 2 sum in case of RAID-5, and more sophisticated math in case of RAID-6 - I have heard of at least two algorithms suitable for RAID-6). Thanks, Mr. Digimer, for clarifying my somewhat vague in this place post.
We're not all "Mr".
Any insight, anybody, which hardware RAID cards of rather which manufacturers of these cards will still make them in a future (say next 5 years)? Even if you just have feelings, without any thought why, I would like to hear them. If you prefer to answer off the list, please, e-mail me directly at galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu
Thanks a lot!
Valeri
LSI brand cards are very common across enterprise (I think all tier-1 vendors, except HP, use LSI (now Avago) based controllers. Given that, I would expect their cards will be available for quite some time to come.
On Sun, May 8, 2016 8:42 pm, Digimer wrote:
On 08/05/16 09:02 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
On Sun, May 8, 2016 7:31 pm, Digimer wrote:
On 08/05/16 08:12 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 5/6/2016 2:26 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
Which internal hardware RAID controllers will survive some future to come in your estimate. First of all my beloved 3ware finally seems to have passed away. After multiple acquisitions and becoming part of LSI and getting bought with LSI, it probably became non operational. Namely, the latest 3ware cards have ancient firmware. Neither of them supports 4kn drives. This speaks for itself for me. [Under new ownership] LSI, though still having new controllers released, and one of their MegaRAID controllers (at least) having support for 4kn drives, still may not last long (just my feeling, I'd like to hear yours). So, what RAID controllers will those of us who like to have hardware RAIDs use in some future to come?
IMHO, "Hardware" (really embedded firmware) RAID is for Windows servers, since MS Windows has awful integrated software raid (aka 'dynamic disk', truly a mess). With Linux, I'd rather use LVM, with BSD, ZFS.
"Hardware RAID" can very well include a controller with dedicated parity processing, battery/flash backed write caching and other tangible benefits.
Right, by "hardware RAID" as opposed to a bit more often used term "software RAID" I did mean the card that has RAID processing done by the chip on board of the card (parity or in other words modulus 2 sum in case of RAID-5, and more sophisticated math in case of RAID-6 - I have heard of at least two algorithms suitable for RAID-6). Thanks, Mr. Digimer, for clarifying my somewhat vague in this place post.
We're not all "Mr".
Sorry, my usual stupidity... Some time I hopefully learn to be, hm... "wiser"?
Any insight, anybody, which hardware RAID cards of rather which manufacturers of these cards will still make them in a future (say next 5 years)? Even if you just have feelings, without any thought why, I would like to hear them. If you prefer to answer off the list, please, e-mail me directly at galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu
Thanks a lot!
Valeri
LSI brand cards are very common across enterprise (I think all tier-1 vendors, except HP, use LSI (now Avago) based controllers. Given that, I would expect their cards will be available for quite some time to come.
Thanks a lot for your insights! This already makes me feel better. In the past LSI would be my definite second choice, and 3ware was winning me only by their transparent web interface. (Several other things LSI had better than 3ware IMHO...)
Thanks again!
Valeri
-- Digimer Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.ca/w/ What if the cure for cancer is trapped in the mind of a person without access to education? _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Speaking from experience (I cannot go into detail on this point), and as Digimer pointed out, LSI seems to be the only choice for enterprise level, large scale deployments.
If your concern is extremely long term deployments with verifiable data recovery options, software RAID is the only option, as you have strong guarantees that the implementation will never "die" as hardware RAID controllers are likely to do.
As others have pointed out, there are indeed tangible benefits to using hardware RAID controllers. It all depends on your use case and project requirements. On May 8, 2016 6:51 PM, "Valeri Galtsev" galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu wrote:
On Sun, May 8, 2016 8:42 pm, Digimer wrote:
On 08/05/16 09:02 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
On Sun, May 8, 2016 7:31 pm, Digimer wrote:
On 08/05/16 08:12 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 5/6/2016 2:26 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
Which internal hardware RAID controllers will survive some future to come in your estimate. First of all my beloved 3ware finally seems to have passed away. After multiple acquisitions and becoming part of LSI and getting bought with LSI, it probably became non operational. Namely, the latest 3ware cards have ancient firmware. Neither of them supports 4kn drives. This speaks for itself for me. [Under new ownership] LSI, though still having new controllers released, and one of their MegaRAID controllers (at least) having support for 4kn drives, still may not last long (just my feeling, I'd like to hear yours). So, what RAID controllers will those of us who like to have hardware RAIDs use in some future to come?
IMHO, "Hardware" (really embedded firmware) RAID is for Windows servers, since MS Windows has awful integrated software raid (aka 'dynamic disk', truly a mess). With Linux, I'd rather use LVM, with BSD, ZFS.
"Hardware RAID" can very well include a controller with dedicated parity processing, battery/flash backed write caching and other tangible benefits.
Right, by "hardware RAID" as opposed to a bit more often used term "software RAID" I did mean the card that has RAID processing done by the chip on board of the card (parity or in other words modulus 2 sum in case of RAID-5, and more sophisticated math in case of RAID-6 - I have heard of at least two algorithms suitable for RAID-6). Thanks, Mr. Digimer, for clarifying my somewhat vague in this place post.
We're not all "Mr".
Sorry, my usual stupidity... Some time I hopefully learn to be, hm... "wiser"?
Any insight, anybody, which hardware RAID cards of rather which manufacturers of these cards will still make them in a future (say next 5 years)? Even if you just have feelings, without any thought why, I would like to hear them. If you prefer to answer off the list, please, e-mail me directly at galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu
Thanks a lot!
Valeri
LSI brand cards are very common across enterprise (I think all tier-1 vendors, except HP, use LSI (now Avago) based controllers. Given that, I would expect their cards will be available for quite some time to come.
Thanks a lot for your insights! This already makes me feel better. In the past LSI would be my definite second choice, and 3ware was winning me only by their transparent web interface. (Several other things LSI had better than 3ware IMHO...)
Thanks again!
Valeri
-- Digimer Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.ca/w/ What if the cure for cancer is trapped in the mind of a person without access to education? _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On May 8, 2016, at 10:10 PM, Mike Mohr akihana@gmail.com wrote:
Speaking from experience (I cannot go into detail on this point), and as Digimer pointed out, LSI seems to be the only choice for enterprise level, large scale deployments.
If your concern is extremely long term deployments with verifiable data recovery options, software RAID is the only option, as you have strong guarantees that the implementation will never "die" as hardware RAID controllers are likely to do.
As others have pointed out, there are indeed tangible benefits to using hardware RAID controllers. It all depends on your use case and project requirements. On May 8, 2016 6:51 PM, "Valeri Galtsev" galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu wrote:
On Sun, May 8, 2016 8:42 pm, Digimer wrote:
On 08/05/16 09:02 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
On Sun, May 8, 2016 7:31 pm, Digimer wrote:
On 08/05/16 08:12 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 5/6/2016 2:26 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote: > Which internal hardware RAID controllers will survive some future to > come > in your estimate. First of all my beloved 3ware finally seems to have > passed away. After multiple acquisitions and becoming part of LSI and > getting bought with LSI, it probably became non operational. Namely, > the > latest 3ware cards have ancient firmware. Neither of them supports > 4kn > drives. This speaks for itself for me. [Under new ownership] LSI, > though > still having new controllers released, and one of their MegaRAID > controllers (at least) having support for 4kn drives, still may not > last > long (just my feeling, I'd like to hear yours). So, what RAID > controllers > will those of us who like to have hardware RAIDs use in some future > to > come?
IMHO, "Hardware" (really embedded firmware) RAID is for Windows servers, since MS Windows has awful integrated software raid (aka 'dynamic disk', truly a mess). With Linux, I'd rather use LVM, with BSD, ZFS.
"Hardware RAID" can very well include a controller with dedicated parity processing, battery/flash backed write caching and other tangible benefits.
Right, by "hardware RAID" as opposed to a bit more often used term "software RAID" I did mean the card that has RAID processing done by the chip on board of the card (parity or in other words modulus 2 sum in case of RAID-5, and more sophisticated math in case of RAID-6 - I have heard of at least two algorithms suitable for RAID-6). Thanks, Mr. Digimer, for clarifying my somewhat vague in this place post.
We're not all "Mr".
Sorry, my usual stupidity... Some time I hopefully learn to be, hm... "wiser"?
Any insight, anybody, which hardware RAID cards of rather which manufacturers of these cards will still make them in a future (say next 5 years)? Even if you just have feelings, without any thought why, I would like to hear them. If you prefer to answer off the list, please, e-mail me directly at galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu
Thanks a lot!
Valeri
LSI brand cards are very common across enterprise (I think all tier-1 vendors, except HP, use LSI (now Avago) based controllers. Given that, I would expect their cards will be available for quite some time to come.
Thanks a lot for your insights! This already makes me feel better. In the past LSI would be my definite second choice, and 3ware was winning me only by their transparent web interface. (Several other things LSI had better than 3ware IMHO...)
Thanks again!
Valeri
-- Digimer Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.ca/w/ What if the cure for cancer is trapped in the mind of a person without access to education? _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On 05/08/2016 06:51 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
In the past LSI would be my definite second choice, and 3ware was winning me only by their transparent web interface.
3ware had a much more pleasant web UI and CLI, but their hardware was terribly unreliable and their performance was pretty awful, too.
Today, your options with hardware controllers are mostly LSI with its gawd-awful management software, or Adaptec, or Areca. I rarely see the latter controllers anywhere. They tend to be less expensive than LSI, but they don't benchmark as well, and their smaller market share may fuel doubt about their future prospects.
And that, I think, underscores a larger point that people try to make in these conversations, which is: There is no rational case to group hardware RAID controllers together and discuss them exclusively. There are pros and cons to each specific product family and no single quality that disqualifies discussion of other options. That is, the differences between an LSI card and an Adaptec card are no less significant than the differences between an LSI RAID array and a software defined array.
My take is this: RAID should not be part of your long-term planning. Everything that's not SAN is moving to software defined storage. Microsoft is moving to Storage Spaces. The UNIX world is moving toward ZFS and btrfs. There are a number of reasons, including hierarchical storage and hybrid storage. Most significant in my opinion though is that while most RAID type can detect spontaneous bit flips, they cannot repair them. You may not use ZFS or btrfs today, but you should definitely be looking at these, long term.
On Sun, May 8, 2016 7:12 pm, John R Pierce wrote:
On 5/6/2016 2:26 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
Which internal hardware RAID controllers will survive some future to come in your estimate. First of all my beloved 3ware finally seems to have passed away. After multiple acquisitions and becoming part of LSI and getting bought with LSI, it probably became non operational. Namely, the latest 3ware cards have ancient firmware. Neither of them supports 4kn drives. This speaks for itself for me. [Under new ownership] LSI, though still having new controllers released, and one of their MegaRAID controllers (at least) having support for 4kn drives, still may not last long (just my feeling, I'd like to hear yours). So, what RAID controllers will those of us who like to have hardware RAIDs use in some future to come?
IMHO, "Hardware" (really embedded firmware) RAID is for Windows servers, since MS Windows has awful integrated software raid (aka 'dynamic disk', truly a mess). With Linux, I'd rather use LVM, with BSD, ZFS.
I didn't intend to [re]start software vs hardware RAID war, I tried to stress it in my original post. So, those who hate hardware RAIDs, please, let this tread go and let folks who like, use, and have knowledge of hardware RAIDs answer my questions with their insights without fear to be shushed or ridiculed by hardware RAID haters.
Thanks a lot for your kind consideration, everybody. And thanks a lot in advance to those who will share their insights.
Valeri
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On Fri, May 6, 2016 1:36 pm, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Got a new box I'm trying to set up. I configured the RAID from the firmware, but "fast initialize" was sitting there at 0% (it's about 43 or 45TB). The first time I tried this, I said background, and rebooted the system.
And the stupid annoying alarm started up as the system came up.
This time, having *finally* figured out how to set up hot spares from the WebBIOS, I suspended the fast initialization, and brought the system up.
Googling, I can't find a command to continue the initialization. Anyone know of one, or is what I want to do rebuild the RAID?
I agree with what John said about their command line interface MegaCli. One thing I have noticed about LSI MegaRaids is: if you hot replace bad drive with good one of the same size or larger (which doesn't have on it traces of being configured in any raid, not necessarily LSI), then the drive is accepted as replacement member into the same volume group, and array gets rebuilt in background automagically. You may want to check first if it is on its way rebuilding already.
Valeri
mark
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev wrote:
On Fri, May 6, 2016 1:36 pm, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Got a new box I'm trying to set up. I configured the RAID from the firmware, but "fast initialize" was sitting there at 0% (it's about 43 or 45TB). The first time I tried this, I said background, and rebooted the system.
And the stupid annoying alarm started up as the system came up.
This time, having *finally* figured out how to set up hot spares from the WebBIOS, I suspended the fast initialization, and brought the
system up. <snip>
I agree with what John said about their command line interface MegaCli. One thing I have noticed about LSI MegaRaids is: if you hot replace bad
Trust me, I've been cursing that interface for years now.
drive with good one of the same size or larger (which doesn't have on it traces of being configured in any raid, not necessarily LSI), then the drive is accepted as replacement member into the same volume group, and array gets rebuilt in background automagically. You may want to check first if it is on its way rebuilding already.
Yeah, I checked with parted, and saw the full size, so then I thought to check the status of the RAID, and it said it was optimal, which I guess means it finished the fast initialization. Partitioned it, built an XFS filesystem, and it's mounted.
Has *ANYONE* at LSI/AVAGO *ever* had anyone other than the folks who wrote the code (or maybe that was Dilbert, himself) try to *use* it?
mark
On Fri, May 6, 2016 4:19 pm, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Valeri Galtsev wrote:
On Fri, May 6, 2016 1:36 pm, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Got a new box I'm trying to set up. I configured the RAID from the firmware, but "fast initialize" was sitting there at 0% (it's about 43 or 45TB). The first time I tried this, I said background, and rebooted the system.
And the stupid annoying alarm started up as the system came up.
This time, having *finally* figured out how to set up hot spares from the WebBIOS, I suspended the fast initialization, and brought the
system up.
<snip> > I agree with what John said about their command line interface MegaCli. > One thing I have noticed about LSI MegaRaids is: if you hot replace bad
Trust me, I've been cursing that interface for years now.
drive with good one of the same size or larger (which doesn't have on it traces of being configured in any raid, not necessarily LSI), then the drive is accepted as replacement member into the same volume group, and array gets rebuilt in background automagically. You may want to check first if it is on its way rebuilding already.
Yeah, I checked with parted, and saw the full size, so then I thought to check the status of the RAID, and it said it was optimal, which I guess means it finished the fast initialization. Partitioned it, built an XFS filesystem, and it's mounted.
Has *ANYONE* at LSI/AVAGO *ever* had anyone other than the folks who wrote the code (or maybe that was Dilbert, himself) try to *use* it?
Agree. But I would say the same about all command line interface utilities for all RAID brands I ever used. LSI likely is the worst. But all of them IMHO are the way to get person even understanding what RAID is and what he is doing into trouble with potential grave consequences. They all use different terminology, often way off what things are usually called. Being OK command line (shell) person, and the one who otherwise prefers shell, when dealing with RAIDs I really-really prefer GUI like 3ware web interface. Sorry about rant.
Valeri
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On 2016-05-06, Valeri Galtsev galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu wrote:
Agree. But I would say the same about all command line interface utilities for all RAID brands I ever used. LSI likely is the worst.
The old Adaptec AAC/AFA syntax was also awful, I'd say just as bad as LSI. (I have suspected that LSI copied most of the AAC UI.) 3ware was bad but not nearly as bad as the other two. (Though as you pointed out in another post, the 3ware line is basically dead. My vendor said the same thing.)
I really-really prefer GUI like 3ware web interface.
I hated 3ware's web interface. :)
I think I've seen posted here before that some folks like the Areca controllers. What's their CLI/GUI like?
I think the worst part about these interfaces is that there really is no (at least that I've found) programming API to access them. If there were, we could write Python/Perl/Java/whatever code to interact with the controller, instead of having to parse stdout of MegaCli64.
--keith
I agree with what John said about their command line interface MegaCli.
It's not that bad, the cli is incredibly detailed so it's just vast. It's not any different in complexity from hpacu in my opinion.
One thing I have noticed about LSI MegaRaids is: if you hot replace bad drive with good one of the same size or larger (which doesn't have on it traces of being configured in any raid, not necessarily LSI), then the drive is accepted as replacement member into the same volume group, and array gets rebuilt in background automagically.
That behavior is configurable, again it's a matter of environment if that make sense for you.
jlc
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