CentOS - May 2016 - OT: hardware: MegaCli and initializing a RAID

Valeri Galtsev wrote:
>
> On Fri, May 6, 2016 1:36 pm, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>> Got a new box I'm trying to set up. I configured the RAID from the
>> firmware, but "fast initialize" was sitting there at 0%
(it's about 43
>> or 45TB). The first time I tried this, I said background, and
>> rebooted the system.
>>
>> And the stupid annoying alarm started up as the system came up.
>>
>> This time, having *finally* figured out how to set up hot spares from
>> the WebBIOS, I suspended the fast initialization, and brought the
system up.
<snip>
> I agree with what John said about their command line interface MegaCli.
> One thing I have noticed about LSI MegaRaids is: if you hot replace bad
Trust me, I've been cursing that interface for years now.
> drive with good one of the same size or larger (which doesn't have on
it
> traces of being configured in any raid, not necessarily LSI), then the
> drive is accepted as replacement member into the same volume group, and
> array gets rebuilt in background automagically. You may want to check
> first if it is on its way rebuilding already.
Yeah, I checked with parted, and saw the full size, so then I thought to
check the status of the RAID, and it said it was optimal, which I guess
means it finished the fast initialization. Partitioned it, built an XFS
filesystem, and it's mounted.

Has *ANYONE* at LSI/AVAGO *ever* had anyone other than the folks who wrote
the code (or maybe that was Dilbert, himself) try to *use* it?

        mark

On Fri, May 6, 2016 4:19 pm, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> Valeri Galtsev wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, May 6, 2016 1:36 pm, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>>> Got a new box I'm trying to set up. I configured the RAID from
the
>>> firmware, but "fast initialize" was sitting there at 0%
(it's about 43
>>> or 45TB). The first time I tried this, I said background, and
>>> rebooted the system.
>>>
>>> And the stupid annoying alarm started up as the system came up.
>>>
>>> This time, having *finally* figured out how to set up hot spares
from
>>> the WebBIOS, I suspended the fast initialization, and brought the
> system up.
> <snip>
>> I agree with what John said about their command line interface MegaCli.
>> One thing I have noticed about LSI MegaRaids is: if you hot replace bad
>
> Trust me, I've been cursing that interface for years now.
>
>> drive with good one of the same size or larger (which doesn't have
on it
>> traces of being configured in any raid, not necessarily LSI), then the
>> drive is accepted as replacement member into the same volume group, and
>> array gets rebuilt in background automagically. You may want to check
>> first if it is on its way rebuilding already.
>
> Yeah, I checked with parted, and saw the full size, so then I thought to
> check the status of the RAID, and it said it was optimal, which I guess
> means it finished the fast initialization. Partitioned it, built an XFS
> filesystem, and it's mounted.
>
> Has *ANYONE* at LSI/AVAGO *ever* had anyone other than the folks who wrote
> the code (or maybe that was Dilbert, himself) try to *use* it?
Agree. But I would say the same about all command line interface utilities
for all RAID brands I ever used. LSI likely is the worst. But all of them
IMHO are the way to get person even understanding what RAID is and what he
is doing into trouble with potential grave consequences. They all use
different terminology, often way off what things are usually called. Being
OK command line (shell) person, and the one who otherwise prefers shell,
when dealing with RAIDs I really-really prefer GUI like 3ware web
interface. Sorry about rant.

Valeri

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On 2016-05-06, Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu>
wrote:
>
> Agree. But I would say the same about all command line interface utilities
> for all RAID brands I ever used. LSI likely is the worst.
The old Adaptec AAC/AFA syntax was also awful, I'd say just as bad as
LSI.  (I have suspected that LSI copied most of the AAC UI.)  3ware was
bad but not nearly as bad as the other two.  (Though as you pointed out
in another post, the 3ware line is basically dead.  My vendor said the
same thing.)
> I really-really prefer GUI like 3ware web interface.
I hated 3ware's web interface.  :)

I think I've seen posted here before that some folks like the Areca
controllers.  What's their CLI/GUI like?

I think the worst part about these interfaces is that there really is
no (at least that I've found) programming API to access them.  If there
were, we could write Python/Perl/Java/whatever code to interact with the
controller, instead of having to parse stdout of MegaCli64.

--keith


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