[CentOS] low end file server with h/w RAID - recommendations

[Keith Keller]

On 2017-11-04, Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
> On Sat, November 4, 2017 4:32 am, hw wrote:
>
>> If the cli is poor, the gui may seem much better

Indeed.  Before the storcli tool came out, the only CLI tool for the LSI
cards was MegaCli, and it was atrocious.  In that case I can imagine the
GUI being preferable (even though the GUI isn't very good either).

Even the storcli tool isn't very good (as I've mentioned).  I can
completely understand someone preferring MSM (the daemon which provides
the backend for the GUI tool) over storcli.

> I do not. As web interface 3ware has is provided by the daemon, in which
> you can configure all automated actions you need, and that daemon will do
> it according to your schedule (but rather the controller itself does most
> of them as configured through web interface). Those who used 3ware cards
> do know it and do use that nice feature.

I never used the 3dm2 web GUI.  I thought it was stupid and greatly
preferred tw_cli.  You can set at least scheduled verifies through
tw_cli. (I don't know if you could use the 3dm2 GUI to schedule other
tasks.)  I only use 3dm2 to send out email alerts.  I tried using MSM to
send out email alerts but I got way way too many alerts for trivial
events, so I ended up disabling it.

> This does not change my perception that _I_ with my mentality have less
> chance to screw up and obliterate RAID array when I need, say, to start
> rebuild if _I_ use GUI web interface, as opposed to command line interface
> (cli). Even if it is just me, I stay convinced to keep doing it this way
> which is safer for the data of my users that live on RAID I am dealing
> with.

This is probably the most important consideration.  Keeping our data
safe is more important than a CLI vs GUI religious war.  :)

Recently I had to use the LSI BIOS' GUI to configure arrays.  Let me tell
you, that was really no fun at all.  It was still point and click but
the GUI was so clunky that it was very difficult to tell what I was
doing.  And the help was useless, so I had to go to my laptop to do
research on some of the options that the controller was asking about.

--keith

-- 
kkeller at wombat.san-francisco.ca.us