Official drives should be here Friday, so trying to get reading. On 1/9/23 01:32, Simon Matter wrote: > Hi > >> Continuing this thread, and focusing on RAID1. >> >> I got an HPE Proliant gen10+ that has hardware RAID support. (can turn >> it off if I want). > What exact model of RAID controller is this? If it's a S100i SR Gen10 then > it's not hardware RAID at all. Yes, I found the information: ============================ HPE Smart Array Gen10 Controllers Data Sheet. Software RAID · HPE Smart Array S100i SR Gen10 Software RAID Notes: - HPE Smart Array S100i SR Gen10 SW RAID will operate in UEFI mode only. For legacy support an additional controller will be needed - The S100i only supports Windows. For Linux users, HPE offers a solution that uses in-distro open-source software to create a two-disk RAID 1 boot volume. For more information visit: https://downloads.linux.hpe.com/SDR/project/lsrrb/ ==================== I have yet to look at this url. >> I am planning two groupings of RAID1 (it has 4 bays). >> >> There is also an internal USB boot port. >> >> So I am really a newbie in working with RAID. From this thread it >> sounds like I want /boot and /boot/efi on that USBVV boot device. > I suggest to use the USB device only to bot the installation medium, not > use it for anything used by the OS. > >> Will it work to put / on the first RAID group? What happens if the 1st >> drive fails and it is replaced with a new blank drive. Will the config >> in /boot figure this out or does the RAID hardware completely mask the 2 >> drives and the system runs on the good one while the new one is being >> replicated? I am trying to grok what you are saying here. is MD0-4 the physical disks or partitions? All the drives I am getting are 4TB, as that is the smallest Enterprise quality HD I could find! Quite overkill for me, $75 each. > I guess the best thing would be to use Linux Software RAID and create a > small RAID1 (MD0) device for /boot and another one for /boot/efi (MD1), Here is sounds like MD0 and MD1 are partitions, not physical drives? > both in the beginning of disk 0 and 1 (MD2). The remaining space on disk 0 > and 1 are created as another MD device. Disk 2 and 3 are also created as > one RAID1 (MD3) device. Formatting can be done like this > > MD0 has filesystem for /boot > MD1 has filesystem for /boot/efi > MD2 is used as LVM PV > MD3 is used as LVM PV Now it really seems like MDn are partitions with MD0-3 on disks 1&2 and MD3 on disks 3&4? > All other filesystems like / or /var or /home... will be created on LVM > Logical Volumes to give you full flexibility to manage storage. Given using iRedMail which puts all mail store under /var/vmail, /var goes on disks 3&4. /home will be little stuff. iRedMail components put their configs and data (like domain and user sql database) all over the places. Disks 1&2 will be basically empty. Wish I could have found high quality 1TB drives for less... thanks > > Regards, > Simon > >> I also don't see how to build that boot USB stick. I will have the >> install ISO in the boot USB port and the 4 drives set up with hardware >> RAID. How are things figure out? I am missing some important piece here. >> >> Oh, HP does list Redhat support for this unit. >> >> thanks for all help. >> >> Bob >> >> On 1/6/23 11:45, Chris Adams wrote: >>> Once upon a time, Simon Matter <simon.matter at invoca.ch> said: >>>> Are you sure that's still true? I've done it that way in the past but >>>> it >>>> seems at least with EL8 you can put /boot/efi on md raid1 with metadata >>>> format 1.0. That way the EFI firmware will see it as two independent >>>> FAT >>>> filesystems. Only thing you have to be sure is that nothing ever writes >>>> to >>>> these filesystems when Linux is not running, otherwise your /boot/efi >>>> md >>>> raid will become corrupt. >>>> >>>> Can someone who has this running confirm that it works? >>> Yes, that's even how RHEL/Fedora set it up currently I believe. But >>> like you say, it only works as long as there's no other OS on the system >>> and the UEFI firmware itself is never used to change anything on the FS. >>> It's not entirely clear that most UEFI firmwares would handle a drive >>> failure correctly either (since it's outside the scope of UEFI), so IIRC >>> there's been some consideration in Fedora of dropping this support. >>> >>> And... I'm not sure if GRUB2 handles RAID 1 /boot fully correctly, for >>> things where it writes to the FS (grubenv updates for "savedefault" for >>> example). But, there's other issues with GRUB2's FS handling anyway, so >>> this case is probably far down the list. >>> >>> I think that having RAID 1 for /boot and/or /boot/efi can be helpful >>> (and I've set it up, definitely not saying "don't do that"), but has to >>> be handled with care and possibly (probably?) would need manual >>> intervention to get booting again after a drive failure or replacement. >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> CentOS mailing list >> CentOS at centos.org >> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >> > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos