[CentOS] OT: Testing and monitoring hardware RAID

[Les Mikesell]

Phil Schaffner wrote:
> Dianne Yumul wrote:
> ...
>> Would you have any suggestions on how I would test the RAID 1  
>> configuration? (Sorry if you already saw the question on the previous  
>> posts)
> 
> Dianne,
> 
> If you feel you must test the functionality of the ability of the RAID1 
> to recover from a failed drive, the power down, remove drive, boot, 
> power down, replace drive, boot process will test the ability of the 
> system to re-sync the drives.  A more rigorous test would be to zero out 
> the partition table of the removed drive, or to use a new blank drive to 
> test the recovery; however, what I think Karanbir meant by "silly" is 
> that all these tests simply confirm that the RAID is working as 
> designed.  If it doesn't, then you should have bought different hardware 
> to start with.

The thing you need to know about RAIDs at runtime is whether or not one 
or more of the drives have already failed since their job is to hide 
this fact from you but you still need to replace it before you lose the 
other one and your data.  Most systems have an error light or something 
that doesn't help much in a remote data center - so you need some 
hardware-specific monitor tool to report the status.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com