I purchased an Intel D945GNT motherboard and it comes in the BIOS with an option to create a RAID 0 or RAID 1 volumes using my existing two SATA disks. However when installing Centos 4.3 x86_64 I see the the installer recognices the two drives and does not "see" the RAID 0. Is that ok? Should I disable the RAID in the BIOS and then go for a LVM+RAID 0 setup in the installer ? Since it will be a server machine I want to gain the performance of RAID 0 without too much complications (i will use ext3 instead of ReiseFS) Thanks, -- ------------------------------------------- Erick Perez Linux User 376588 http://counter.li.org/ (Get counted!!!) Panama, Republic of Panama
Erick Perez <mailto:eaperezh at gmail.com> tapped at Friday, May 26, 2006 1:57 PM:> I purchased an Intel D945GNT motherboard and it comes in the BIOS with > an option to create a RAID 0 or RAID 1 volumes using my existing two > SATA disks. However when installing Centos 4.3 x86_64 I see the the > installer recognices the two drives and does not "see" the RAID 0. > Is that ok? > Should I disable the RAID in the BIOS and then go for a LVM+RAID 0 > setup in the installer ? > Since it will be a server machine I want to gain the performance of > RAID 0 without too much complications (i will use ext3 instead of > ReiseFS) > > Thanks,Erick, I ran into the same problem with my Dell system that had onboard SATA raid. I couldn't get it to work without seeing both SATA drives as individual drives. What I did instead was to use a 3Ware card to mirror the drives. I'm just not a big fan of SW raid, so I go hardware when I can. So far, all I have is the basic CentOS installed, this is my first time using CentOS since RH 7.3 days. HTH Mark
Erick Perez wrote:> I purchased an Intel D945GNT motherboard and it comes in the BIOS with > an option to create a RAID 0 or RAID 1 volumes using my existing two > SATA disks. However when installing Centos 4.3 x86_64 I see the the > installer recognices the two drives and does not "see" the RAID 0. > Is that ok? > Should I disable the RAID in the BIOS and then go for a LVM+RAID 0 > setup in the installer ? > Since it will be a server machine I want to gain the performance of > RAID 0 without too much complications (i will use ext3 instead of > ReiseFS)Hi Erick. It's doubtful that your on-board RAID controller is going to work with Linux. Most of the on-board controllers are really nothing more than two SATA channels with the driver (for Windows) providing the RAID functionality. Thus, you're really not gaining hardware RAID, in spite of what you are led to believe by the BIOS options. That's why Linux is reporting it as two drives. You have two choices: 1) Buy a hardware RAID controller (my choice being the 3ware brand), or 2) use software RAID. Since that's what you'd be getting anyways if you were using this board with Windows and the appropriate driver, you're not losing anything. FWIW I've had no problems whatsoever when using software RAID. I use it on many of my servers. Barry
Barry L. Kline <mailto:blkline at attglobal.net> tapped at Friday, May 26, 2006 2:56 PM:> Erick Perez wrote: >> I purchased an Intel D945GNT motherboard and it comes in the BIOS >> with an option to create a RAID 0 or RAID 1 volumes using my >> existing two SATA disks. However when installing Centos 4.3 x86_64 I >> see the the installer recognices the two drives and does not "see" >> the RAID 0. >> Is that ok? >> Should I disable the RAID in the BIOS and then go for a LVM+RAID 0 >> setup in the installer ? Since it will be a server machine I want to >> gain the performance of RAID 0 without too much complications (i >> will use ext3 instead of ReiseFS) > > Hi Erick. > > It's doubtful that your on-board RAID controller is going to work with > Linux. Most of the on-board controllers are really nothing more than > two SATA channels with the driver (for Windows) providing the RAID > functionality. Thus, you're really not gaining hardware RAID, in > spite > of what you are led to believe by the BIOS options. That's why Linux > is > reporting it as two drives. > > You have two choices: 1) Buy a hardware RAID controller (my choice > being the 3ware brand), or 2) use software RAID. Since that's what > you'd be getting anyways if you were using this board with Windows and > the appropriate driver, you're not losing anything. > > FWIW I've had no problems whatsoever when using software RAID. I use > it > on many of my servers.I'd like to know how things went with software raid when you've lost a drive in a mirror or RAID5. The times that's happened to me, I could never recover the partition - had to always restore from tape. After that point, it was hardware only. Software RAID works fine, as long as there's no problems. Mark
Rodrigo Barbosa <mailto:rodrigob at suespammers.org> tapped at Friday, May 26, 2006 3:15 PM:> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On Fri, May 26, 2006 at 03:10:37PM -0700, Mark Schoonover wrote: >> Barry L. Kline <mailto:blkline at attglobal.net> tapped at Friday, May >> 26, 2006 2:56 PM: I'd like to know how things went with software >> raid when you've lost a drive in a mirror or RAID5. The times that's >> happened to me, I could never recover the partition - had to always >> restore from tape. After that point, it was hardware only. Software >> RAID works fine, as long as there's no problems. > > Never had a problem with that. Always worked fine for me. Had at > least 3 > different cases like that so far. Always recovered flawlessly. >Hmmm, maybe it was user error on my part? I lost a 2TB system system built on md, and then again with a 250GB system. It was tough getting 2TB off of tape in a quick manner! :) Ended up doing disk to disk backups, and staying away from software raid. Hardware raid really isn't that expensive these days, even for large 16 drive systems. Mark
Barry L. Kline <mailto:blkline at attglobal.net> tapped at Friday, May 26, 2006 4:48 PM:> Mark Schoonover wrote: >> Barry L. Kline <mailto:blkline at attglobal.net> tapped at Friday, May >> 26, 2006 2:56 PM: >> > >> >> I'd like to know how things went with software raid when you've lost >> a drive in a mirror or RAID5. The times that's happened to me, I >> could never recover the partition - had to always restore from tape. >> After that point, it was hardware only. Software RAID works fine, as >> long as there's no problems. >> > > I have lost a drive in a mirror and had no trouble recovering it. The > steps are basically the same for a RAID 5 system as they are for the > mirror. > > What I figured out early on was that I didn't want to be discovering > how RAID recovery works while under the gun to get a failed drive > replaced. I tried that once and found it extremely stressful. > > What you might want to do (assuming that you have an old PC and a > couple > of old drives around) is build a test system that you can experiment > with.Today, you don't need the spare hardware laying around. You can download VMware Server for free, and create what you need virtually. You'll accomplish the same thing, without the added expense and space of using actual hardware. I did that and now have a good working knowledge of the> recovery > steps. ('tho I took good notes because the frequence of this occuring > has been, for me, rather low). Failed drive in another machine? > BRING > IT ON! (okay, okay... I don't want to tempt the gods and *really* > have > that failure, but I'm not as concerned about it as I once was). > > BarryI'd rather not bring it on, but there are times it's going to happen! Mark
Barry L. Kline <mailto:blkline at attglobal.net> tapped at Friday, May 26, 2006 4:50 PM:> Les Mikesell wrote: >> On Fri, 2006-05-26 at 16:56, Barry L. Kline wrote: > >> >> Note that unless it has changed recently, SATA drives don't pass >> errors up to the software raid layer correctly. If a drive >> dies it doesn't get kicked out as it should. > > Good point. The systems on which I use it are either IDE-based or > SCSI-based. The SATA machines I have are all 3ware RAID controller > equipped. > > BarryThis is what I go with, 3Ware and SATA drives. My company just needs the raw storage space, and not so much speed. So, I can live with SATA drives on 3Ware cards, and things just work. Mark
David Thompson <mailto:thomas at cs.wisc.edu> tapped at Tuesday, May 30, 2006 5:55 AM:> Mark Schoonover wrote: >> Software RAID works fine, as long as there's no problems. > > ROTFL -- that's geek comedy at its finest... >I wasn't trying to be funny, it just happened that way! Came to the same conclusion you did. We use 3Ware on our systems that require plenty of disk space, but don't require high performance. If we need the latter, then it's SCSI RAID. HTH Mark