[CentOS] [HW] Do the HDD cages in rack mount chassis indicate visual/audio HDD failure?

Tue Oct 11 14:58:15 UTC 2011
m.roth at 5-cent.us <m.roth at 5-cent.us>

Arun Khan wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 12:46 PM, John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com>
> wrote:
>> On 10/11/11 12:11 AM, Arun Khan wrote:
>>> In rack mount chassis, do the cages that house the
>>> hard disks have the following feature?
<snip>
> Does these bays have a connector (+ cable) that is connected to the
> motherboard or RAID card to control the HDD LEDs in the bay?
> (sorry if this appears basic but I have no experience with such hardware)

They have sleds. You screw a std. drive into one, and shove it in -
literally, that's all there is to it.
>
>>> (b) The failed HDD can be swapped.
>>
>> If they are in hotswap bays, yes.  if they aren't, no.
>
> Are the hot swap bays compatible with Linux mdadm RAID?  i.e. Upon
> detection of disk failure, the respective HDD LED on the bay can be
> turned ON?

Everything understands hot swap bays these days, and certainly Linux, like
every other version of Unix, does. Let's see, I have well over a hundred
rackmounts in our server rooms and the data center, all have hot swap, and
90% are running CentOS (and a very few RHEL, and a couple of odd things,
and there are the few WinDoze servers (they have hot swap, also).
<snip>
> The 2U system is for an appliance that I am building and it will be a
> commercial product.  I plan to order the "integrated" system from
> "value add" SIs of Supremicro/Tyan (whover is able to satisfy the h/w
> spec.).  My storage requirement is 2TB (4X1TB disks), a 6 disk bay
> should be sufficient (or whatever is the lowest denominator).

You absolutely do *NOT* want anything but hot swap. Take a look at the
Dell R[468]10's.
<snip>
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