Nerveware


Raid configuration

At the end of this document you've learned to setup a basic raid configuration your own. First you must find the kind of kernel driver in use. Where older dist versions use cciss this document will describe the usage of hpsa.

$ lspci -k | grep -i raid -A 2 04:00.0 RAID bus controller: Hewlett-Packard Company Smart Array G6 controllers (rev 01) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Smart Array P410i Kernel driver in use: hpsa 08:00.0 RAID bus controller: Hewlett-Packard Company Smart Array G6 controllers (rev 01) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Smart Array P411 Kernel driver in use: hpsa

Our server

At startup, you can create a logical drive to install the OS. This is pretty straight forward. When the Controller initialization starts you will be prompted to enter the ROM. Hit F8 to enter it and go to "create a logical volume". Press enter again and F8 to save the configuration. Enter to go back to the main menu and Esc to continue the boot.

HP Prolaint ML350 G6 Value Amount
Processor Intel Xeon E5506 2.13GHz 1 * 4 cores
Memory DDR3 2 * 2GB
Smart Array P410i 4 entries
Smart Array P411 2 entries
Storage SAS disk 15K 2 * 146GB
Storage SCUSI disk 15K 2 * 72GB

You should know

Raid 1 is an expensive setup also known as mirroring. Basically, this means that the two disk copy their data onto the other until their equal. If a disk fails, the logical drive rebuilds itself when a new disk is inserted.
We'll setup two raid volumes to learn you the basics. If you want to establish a raid 5 setup, you should buy some disks and change the array to raid 5. Easy as 3.1415 :-)

Installing software

HP provides software to configure your raid setup. Although the software is licensed (can't erase physical drives) the functionality is pretty decent.

$ wget -qO - http://downloads.linux.hp.com/SDR/repo/mcp/GPG-KEY-mcp | apt-key add - $ echo "deb http://downloads.linux.hp.com/SDR/repo/mcp/ wheezy/current non-free" \ >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/proliant.sources.list $ apt-get update && apt-get install hpacucli

Hpacucli can be used both as an interactive shell or a command. We'll use the interactive shell because they spent time building it and it would be a shame not to use it.

Coming up: finding disks.