Hi All:
Has anyone tried using an LSI MegaRAID 320-2E PCIe RAID Controller in an HP DL380G5 (of any HP G5 DL for that matter) running CentOS 5? It looks like it should work but it would be nice to know that someone has already done it before I start going to all the effort and expense of building the box. I have a spare DL380 and a couple of IBM EXP400 disk arrays that I would like to configure as a backup database server.
Any and all comments will be appreciated.
Regards, Hugh
Has anyone tried using an LSI MegaRAID 320-2E PCIe RAID Controller in an HP DL380G5 (of any HP G5 DL for that matter) running CentOS 5? It looks like it should work but it would be nice to know that someone has already done it before I start going to all the effort and expense of building the box. I have a spare DL380 and a couple of IBM EXP400 disk arrays that I would like to configure as a backup database server.
While I haven't, I also agree it should, but you can email support@lsi.com and ask, they have top notch support, I just asked a similar question a month ago for a PCIe card in an HP server...
jlc
From: Joseph L. Casale Sent: February 3, 2011 11:59
Has anyone tried using an LSI MegaRAID 320-2E PCIe RAID Controller in an HP DL380G5 (of any HP G5 DL for that matter) running CentOS 5? It looks like it should work but it would be nice to know that someone has already done it before I start going to all the effort and expense of building the box. I have a spare DL380 and a couple of IBM EXP400 disk arrays that I would like to configure as a backup database server.
While I haven't, I also agree it should, but you can email support@lsi.com and ask, they have top notch support, I just asked a similar question a month ago for a PCIe card in an HP server...
Thanks. That is an excellent suggestion and one I should have thought of as well (but I did not). I will give it a try right now.
Regards, Hugh
-- Hugh E Cruickshank, Forward Software, www.forward-software.com
From: Hugh E Cruickshank Sent: February 3, 2011 12:06
From: Joseph L. Casale Sent: February 3, 2011 11:59
While I haven't, I also agree it should, but you can email support@lsi.com and ask, they have top notch support, I just asked a similar question a month ago for a PCIe card in an HP server...
Thanks. That is an excellent suggestion and one I should have thought of as well (but I did not). I will give it a try right now.
Well their response was:
Please accept my apologies, but the end-of-life 320-2E does not have a compatibility matrix.
Looks like I will just have to go ahead and try it out for myself.
Thanks again for your suggestion.
Regards, Hugh
I have an Altos G510 server, (two xeon sockets) and it has a Megaraid scsi 320-0X PCI-X controller that 5.5 recognizes.
Maybe there's a chance it will do so for yours...
Good luck
From: compdoc Sent: February 3, 2011 15:23
I have an Altos G510 server, (two xeon sockets) and it has a Megaraid scsi 320-0X PCI-X controller that 5.5 recognizes.
Maybe there's a chance it will do so for yours...
I am currently using 320-2X units in our Acer G700 and G701 servers with CentOS 4.8 and 5.5 without problems. My concern was with using the 320-2E units in an HP DL380G5 box with CentOS 5. This is something that I have no experience with and I was asking if anyone had had it working in the HP box.
Thanks for your comment.
Regards, Hugh
On 02/03/11 3:32 PM, Hugh E Cruickshank wrote:
From: compdoc Sent: February 3, 2011 15:23
I have an Altos G510 server, (two xeon sockets) and it has a Megaraid scsi 320-0X PCI-X controller that 5.5 recognizes.
Maybe there's a chance it will do so for yours...
I am currently using 320-2X units in our Acer G700 and G701 servers with CentOS 4.8 and 5.5 without problems. My concern was with using the 320-2E units in an HP DL380G5 box with CentOS 5. This is something that I have no experience with and I was asking if anyone had had it working in the HP box.
does that box have PCI-X slots rather than PCI-Express ? if it does, and the controller is supported by the OS, there's really no reason for it not to work.
if you want to use it in conjunction with built in drive bays, internal cabling may be an issue. if its for use with external arrays, that should be fine.
From: John R Pierce Sent: February 3, 2011 16:41
On 02/03/11 3:32 PM, Hugh E Cruickshank wrote:
From: compdoc Sent: February 3, 2011 15:23
I have an Altos G510 server, (two xeon sockets) and it has a Megaraid scsi 320-0X PCI-X controller that 5.5 recognizes.
Maybe there's a chance it will do so for yours...
I am currently using 320-2X units in our Acer G700 and G701 servers with CentOS 4.8 and 5.5 without problems. My concern was with using the 320-2E units in an HP DL380G5 box with CentOS 5. This is something that I have no experience with and I was asking if anyone had had it working in the HP box.
does that box have PCI-X slots rather than PCI-Express ? if it does, and the controller is supported by the OS, there's really no reason for it not to work.
if you want to use it in conjunction with built in drive bays, internal cabling may be an issue. if its for use with external arrays, that should be fine.
The DL380G5 comes with a "PCI riser" cage that has 3 PCIe slots. There is an optional "PCI-X/PCI-E Riser" which has 2 PCIx slots and one PCIe. This would be an option for us and it should work with the 320-2 cards that we already have. The only problem with this would be that I have three external arrays with two UW320 ports each therefore I would need three controller cards.
I have done a search on the PCI-X/PCI-E Riser and, although it has been discontinued, there does seem to be a reasonable supply available.
I will reconsider the need for all three arrays and see if I can go with the PCI-X cards.
Thanks for your suggestion.
Regards, Hugh
On 02/03/11 5:06 PM, Hugh E Cruickshank wrote:
I will reconsider the need for all three arrays and see if I can go with the PCI-X cards.
If this is SAS stuff, you can generally daisy chain a few trays of drives, at the expensive of total available IO bandwidth (eg, fewer SAS channels are being shared by more drives)
From: John R Pierce Sent: February 3, 2011 17:14
On 02/03/11 5:06 PM, Hugh E Cruickshank wrote:
I will reconsider the need for all three arrays and see if I can go with the PCI-X cards.
If this is SAS stuff, you can generally daisy chain a few trays of drives, at the expensive of total available IO bandwidth (eg, fewer SAS channels are being shared by more drives)
Unfortunately it is SCSI 3 (Ultra320) which, in itself, is "chainable" however I believe that there may be a limitation based on the SCSI ID of the individual drives. I will have to do some experimentation to see if this is possible.
Thanks for your suggestion. It is not one I had thought of as I am so used to limiting one array to one controller.
Regards, Hugh
On 02/03/11 5:23 PM, Hugh E Cruickshank wrote:
From: John R Pierce Sent: February 3, 2011 17:14
On 02/03/11 5:06 PM, Hugh E Cruickshank wrote:
I will reconsider the need for all three arrays and see if I can go with the PCI-X cards.
If this is SAS stuff, you can generally daisy chain a few trays of drives, at the expensive of total available IO bandwidth (eg, fewer SAS channels are being shared by more drives)
Unfortunately it is SCSI 3 (Ultra320) which, in itself, is "chainable" however I believe that there may be a limitation based on the SCSI ID of the individual drives. I will have to do some experimentation to see if this is possible.
Thanks for your suggestion. It is not one I had thought of as I am so used to limiting one array to one controller.
parallel scsi supports 15 max devices plus the controller makes 16. and often there is a SES backplane controller using a target ID leaving just 14 drives per channel/controller.
From: John R Pierce Sent: February 3, 2011 17:30
parallel scsi supports 15 max devices plus the controller makes 16. and often there is a SES backplane controller using a target ID leaving just 14 drives per channel/controller.
With 12 drive per array the IDs get chewed up fast. But I believe I am in luck as I just recalled that one of the MegaRAID cards is a 320-4 not a 320-2 and it has four ports. That means I can get away with one 320-2 and one 320-4 and still have 6 ports while only requiring two PCI-X slots. It looks like this is going together and for a lot less then I was looking at the first place since I only need to purchase one riser ($200.00) instead of three 320-2E cards (price varies from $275 to $700 each depending on the source).
Thanks to all for your responses. They were all appreciated.
Regards, Hugh
-- Hugh E Cruickshank, Forward Software, www.forward-software.com
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compdoc -
Hugh E Cruickshank -
John R Pierce -
Joseph L. Casale