DPT-Hardware-RAID-HOWTO(1).pdf

Linux DPT Hardware RAID HOWTO

Table of Contents

Linux DPT Hardware RAID HOWTO. ...........................................................................................................1

Ram Samudrala (me@ram.org). ..............................................................................................................1

1. Introduction. .........................................................................................................................................1

2. Supported controllers. ..........................................................................................................................1

3. What hardware should be used?. .........................................................................................................1

4. Installation. ..........................................................................................................................................1

5. Usage.. ..................................................................................................................................................1

6. Features in the EATA DMA driver .....................................................................................................1

7. Troubleshooting. ..................................................................................................................................1

8. References. ...........................................................................................................................................2

9. Acknowledgements. .............................................................................................................................2

1. Introduction. .........................................................................................................................................2

2. Supported controllers. ..........................................................................................................................2

2.1 DPT controllers. .................................................................................................................................2

2.2 ICP vortex controllers. .......................................................................................................................2

3. What hardware should be used?. .........................................................................................................3

3.1 Controller type. ..................................................................................................................................3

3.2 Enclosure type. ...................................................................................................................................3

4. Installation. ..........................................................................................................................................3

4.1 Installing and configuring the hardware. ...........................................................................................3

4.2 Configuring the kernel. ......................................................................................................................4

4.3 Bootup messages. ...............................................................................................................................4

5. Usage.. ..................................................................................................................................................5

5.1 fdisk, mke2fs, mount, etc.. .................................................................................................................5

5.2 Hot swapping. ....................................................................................................................................5

5.3 Performance. ......................................................................................................................................5

6. Features in the EATA DMA driver .....................................................................................................6

7. Troubleshooting. ..................................................................................................................................7

7.1 Upon bootup, no SCSI hosts are detected. .........................................................................................7

7.2 RAID configuration shows up as N different disks. ..........................................................................8

7.3 Machine/controller is shut down in the middle of a forma. ..............................................................8

7.4 SCSI_ABORT_BUSY errors produced during initial filesystem forma. .........................................8

7.5 If all fails.... ........................................................................................................................................8

8. References. ..........................................................................................................................................8

9. Acknowledgements. .............................................................................................................................9

Linux DPT Hardware RAID HOWTO

Ram Samudrala (me@ram.org)

v1.62, August 4, 2004

How to set up hardware RAID under Linux. This HOWTO is now limited to making small changes from

version 1.6.

1. Introduction

2. Supported controllers

· 2.2 ICP vortex controllers

2.1 DPT controllers

3. What hardware should be used?

· 3.2 Enclosure type

3.1 Controller type

4. Installation

· 4.2 Configuring the kernel

4.1 Installing and configuring the hardware

· 4.3 Bootup messages

5. Usage

· 5.2 Hot swapping

5.1 fdisk, mke2fs, mount, etc.

· 5.3 Performance

6. Features in the EATA DMA driver

7. Troubleshooting

· 7.2 RAID configuration shows up as N different disks

7.1 Upon bootup, no SCSI hosts are detected

· 7.3 Machine/controller is shut down in the middle of a format

· 7.4 SCSI_ABORT_BUSY errors produced during initial filesystem format

· 7.5 If all fails...

Linux DPT Hardware RAID HOWTO

Linux DPT Hardware RAID HOWTO

8. References

9. Acknowledgements

1. Introduction

This document describes how to set up SCSI hardware RAID, focusing mainly on host−based adapters from

DPT, though the principles applied here are fairly general.

Use the information below at your own risk. I disclaim all responsibility for anything you may do after

reading this HOWTO. The latest version of this HOWTO will always be available at

http://www.ram.org/computing/linux/dpt_raid.html.

For the purposes of this HOWTO, I am assuming you have only a Linux system running. Also, note that I've

only tried this out with the DPT Smartcache IV PM2144UW and PM3334UW controllers, with DPT

(SmartRAID tower) and Wetex enclosures, and I have no experience with other setups. So things may be

different for your setup.

2. Supported controllers

One well−supported host−based hardware RAID controller (i.e, a controller for which there exists a driver

under Linux) is one that is made by DPT. However, there exist other host−based and SCSI−to−SCSI

controllers which may work under Linux. These include the ones made by Syred , ICP−Vortex, and BusLogic .

See the RAID solutions for Linux page for more info.

If, in the future, there is support for other controllers, I will do my best to incorporate that information into

this HOWTO. Please send me any such information you think is appropriate for this HOWTO.

2.1 DPT controllers

This document is currently DPT−oriented. Essentially all the SmartRAID IV controllers are supported.

2.2 ICP vortex controllers

ICP vortex has a complete line of disk array controllers which support Linux. The ICP driver is in the Linux

kernel since version 2.0.31. All major Linux Distributors S.u.S.e., LST Power Linux, Caldera and Red Hat

support the ICP controllers as boot/installation controllers. The RAID system can easily be configured with

their ROMSETUP (you do not have to boot MS−DOS for configuration!).

With the monitoring utility GDTMON it is possible to manage the complete ICP RAID system during

operation (check transfer rates, set parameters for the controller and hard disks, exchange defective hard disks,

etc.). Currently available are: 1 and 2 channel wide and ultra SCSI controller for RAID 0 and RAID 1 1, 2, 3

and 5 chn. wide and ultra SCSI controller for RAID 0, 1, 4, 5 and 10 1 and 2 channel wide and ultra2 LVDS

SCSI controller for RAID 0 and RAID 1 1, 2, 3 and 5 chn. wide and ultra2 LVDS SCSI controller for RAID

0, 1, 4, 5 and 10 1 and 2 port Fibre Channel controllers for RAID 0, 1, 4, 5 and 10 Pretty soon there will be

also 64−bit controllers available.

8. References

Linux DPT Hardware RAID HOWTO

ICP is transitioning the entry−level RS series from Ultra2 SCSI to Ultra160 SCSI. The drivers, firmware,

features, capabilities etc remain the same. They are still 32 Bit cards with the i960RS processor working at

100MHz. The only difference is they will work at Ultra160 (data transfer rate of 160MB/sec) rather than

Ultra2 (data transfer of 80MB/sec).

Effective immediately, the GDT7523RN units will become GDT8523RZ and the GDT7623RN units will

become GDT8623RZ. The transition from 33MHz on the PCI bus to 66MHz represents a huge potential

performance increase. The new cards will have the new Intel 80303 "Zion" processor, allowing bus master

transfer rates of up to 528MB/sec, and will take up to 256MB of ECC RAM on PC133 SDRAM Dimms.

3. What hardware should be used?

3.1 Controller type

Given all these options, if you're looking for a RAID solution, you need to think carefully about what you

want. Depending on what you want to do, and which RAID level you wish to use, some cards may be better

than others. SCSI−to−SCSI adapters may not be as good as host−based adapters, for example. Michael

Neuffer ( neuffer@uni−mainz.de) , the author of the EATA−DMA driver, has a nice discussion about this on

his Linux High Performance SCSI and RAID page .

3.2 Enclosure type

The enclosure type affects the hot swap−ability of the drive, the warning systems (i.e., whether there will be

indication of failure, and whether you will know which drive has failed), and what kind of treatment your

drive receives (for example, redundant cooling and power supplies). We used the DPT supplied enclosures

which work extremely well, but they are expensive.

4. Installation

4.1 Installing and configuring the hardware

Refer to the instruction manual to install the card and the drives. For DPT, since a storage manager for Linux

doesn't exist yet, you need to create a MS−DOS−formatted disk with the system on it (usually created using

the command "format /s" at the MS−DOS prompt). You will also be using the DPT storage manager for

MS−DOS (available from the Adaptec website ), which you should probably make a copy of for safety.

Once the hardware is in place, boot using the DOS system disk. Replace the DOS disk with the storage

manager. And invoke the storage manager using the command:

a:\ dptmgr

Wait a minute or so, and you'll get a nice menu of options. Configure the set of disks as a hardware RAID

(single logical array). Choose "other" as the operating system.

The MS−DOS storage manager is a lot easier to use with a mouse, and so you might want to have a mouse

driver on the initial system disk you create.

3. What hardware should be used?

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