Precision 490, FC6 and Hardware Raid

Tue May 1 08:53:57 CDT 2007

This is a helpful link for sw raid setups.

All the information for setting up SW raid on RHEL4 can be found in the
RHEL4 Sys Admin Guide (Chapter 10. Software RAID Configuration) http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/sysadmin-guide/

-----Original Message-----
From: linux-precision-bounces at dell.com [mailto:linux-precision-bounces at dell.com] On Behalf Of John_Hull at dell.com
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 6:42 AM
To: ballard at stanford.edu; rusty at s5w.com
Cc: linux-precision-Lists
Subject: RE: Precision 490, FC6 and Hardware Raid

The RAID on the SATA controller is not actually hardware RAID, but a driver-based (software) RAID. You would actually need 2 sets of drivers for this to work: the actual controller driver (ahci or ata_piix), which is present since you can see the disks, and a driver for the software RAID portion (dmraid). For RHEL 4, Red Hat has not added dmraid support to their installer, which is why you're seeing 2 disks instead of a RAID volume. 

If you have to use RHEL 4, our recommendation is to disable the RAID provided by the system, and use the software RAID that the Linux kernel provides (md). You'll still get the NCQ feature you're looking for, and get a better supported and manageable software RAID as well. 

-----Original Message-----
From: linux-precision-bounces at dell.com [mailto:linux-precision-bounces at dell.com] On Behalf Of Barry Allard
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 2:24 PM
To: rusty at s5w.com
Cc: linux-precision-Lists
Subject: RE: Precision 490, FC6 and Hardware Raid

Hi Rusty,

Did Dell help get your system working with hardware raid-1 yet?  

In the RHEL 4 installer, our SATA drives show up individually instead of as one array.  The minimum goal is to get some good drivers for the controller to get NCQ going.  We can't go RHEL 5 because it's not supported by our folks and it's too new.  Ideally, Intel should support Linux better 

We're trying to install RHEL as per the following:

OS: RHEL 4 Update 4 AS x86_64  original iso as downloaded directly from RHN,
md5 verified.
Hardware: Precision 490
Bios: A04
Controller: "Intel 631xESB/632xESB SATA RAID Controller" pci id: 8086:2682,
firmware: 5.6.2.1002
Drives: 2 x 160 GB 10k SATA, WDC WD1600ADFS-75SLR2, both firmware: 21.07Q21 Ordered RAID config: C4- All SATA Hard Drives, RAID1 for 2 Hard Drives, Dell Precision 690 (341-3433)

Tried with and without driver floppies from R131526.

Kind Regards,
Barry Allard
Stanford Medical Informatics (SMI)
Work: +1.650.723.7270 Pacific Time (shared with Alex Skrenchuk, rings through to his cell.)

If you can't reach me, try Alex.  alexskr at stanford.edu

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