[ldm-users] raid / Re: Fedora 7 redux: BUSTED!

Tue Oct 16 12:52:19 MDT 2007

A colleague here has had some problems with the Areca controllers when 
exposed, during operation, to temperatures in excess of 140deg F.  Be 
forewarned that, if your data center gets that hot, your Areca card may 
die and take your hard disks with it.  Or the other way around.  Yeah, 
that happened.  When temps got under control and he went in to survey 
the damage the Areca card went into an auto-rebuild mode and as with 
most good home renovation, performed demolition first.

RAID 6 is the way we're going simply because we want to survive the 
2-disk failures we've seen in the past (twice I can think of).

gerry

Rob Cermak wrote:
> RAID 1?  I like Gerry's idea of moving from RAID 5 to 6.
> 
> A recent hardware raid driver that moved into recent kernels is the Areca
> driver.  We have this card sitting in a 16 SATA drive array and we have
> it currently broken up into 4 raid volumes.
> 
> We had a 750GB disk die.  The volume affected went in to degraded mode. 
> We swapped the disk out and the volume regenerated automatically.  Took
> 4.5 hours, but it regenerated.  During this 4.5 hour rebuild, two things
> can happen:  (1) you can lose another disk and your whole volume is
> toast, (2) find out the new disk you swapped in is bad.  Anyway, this
> whole proceedure did not require any downtime.  The OS (Mandriva 2007)
> didn't notice a thing.  Granted I/O was a bit slower during the degraded
> period and rebuild.
> 
> http://www.areca.com.tw/
> 
> The raid card requires a PCI-X slot.  But it is a hardware raid and I
> think servicable from the Linux side, but we use the NIC port on the card
> to talk to the built in webserver.  The NIC card can also be configured
> to send SNMP messages or email when states change on the raid.  The raid
> card also emits a loud beep (much like a UPS overload) that you can
> acknowledge and turn off.  That takes care of problems where email
> notification fails.
> 
> Another group referred us to this card and to a company that sells the
> card in the enclosures, if you want that referral, I will email it to you
> off-list.  Or, you can roll your own as the card itself can be found.
> 
> Rob
> 
> # dmesg | grep -i areca
> 
> ARECA RAID ADAPTER0: FIRMWARE VERSION V1.39 2006-2-9
> scsi0 : Areca SATA Host Adapter RAID Controller( RAID6 capable)
> 
> At RAID 5, 4 x 500 GB SATA volume will net you about 1.4Tb of space.
> 
> Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/sdd1             1.4T  472G  834G  37% /arsc
> 
> # lspci | grep -i areca
> 02:0e.0 RAID bus controller: Areca Technology Corp. ARC-1160 16-Port
> PCI-X to SATA RAID Controller
> 
> # uname -a
> Linux some.host.edu 2.6.22.1 #1 SMP Thu Jul 12 16:44:37 AKDT 2007 i686
> Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 285 GNU/Linux
> 
> On Mon, October 15, 2007 9:44 pm, Gilbert Sebenste wrote:
>> On Mon, 15 Oct 2007, Michael Dross wrote:
>>
>>> Hope this is not too far off topic...
>>>
>>> SAS is SCSI. "Serial Attached SCSI" It's just a "newer/better" version
>>> so to
>>> speak. SAS drives are to SATA, like
>>> SCSI is/was to IDE... in terms of performance... if that makes any
>>> sense.
>>> Overly simplified, but hopefully
>>> draws a connection.
>>>
>>> Now the confusing part is that a SAS designed backplane and controller
>>> will
>>> work with SATA II drives.
>>> But most folks that have paid the premium for SAS raid controllers,
>>> need the
>>> performance and usually install
>>> SAS drives, despite their higher cost.
>> Cool. Well, here's where I ask another question.
>>
>> Starting in February, as UNIDATA points out oh so well, for those of us
>> who love the Level 2 radar data...we're going to love it a lot more. To
>> the tune of 2.3 times more, in terms of file size. Only the lower tilts
>> will have the "super resolution", but let's face it: those file sizes
>> aren't going to be small.
>>
>> So I am thinking this. I am on a pretty tight budget, and yet I want the
>> Level 2 data...from every site...
>>
>> I buy a RAID 1 array. This means I have two 750 GB SATA drives, running
>> SATA 1 until either the Kernel or the OS or the hardware firmware gets
>> straightened out. I have 1.5 GB/sec throughput on each drive. If one hard
>> drive blows up, everything is still cool and things keep chugging along.
>> And, I (hope) things can be rebuilt on the blown second drive
>> automagically.
>>
>> So my questions are:
>>
>> 1. Is this going to be fast enough to handle Level 2 data starting next
>> spring?
>>
>> 2. How do you set this up?
>>
>> 3. What specific hardware is needed? (Yes, I've never done this before.)
>>
>> 4. Or do I tell my boss that I REALLY need SCSI or SAS drives to do a
>> RAID 1 array with what I am going to do?
>>
>> *******************************************************************************
>> Gilbert Sebenste
>> ********
>> (My opinions only!)
>> ******
>> Staff Meteorologist, Northern Illinois University
>> ****
>> E-mail: sebenste at weather.admin.niu.edu
>> ***
>> web: http://weather.admin.niu.edu                                      **
>> *******************************************************************************
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>>
> 
> 

-- 
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University
Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.862.3982 FAX: 979.862.3983
Office: 1700 Research Parkway Ste 160, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843