topic Is it possible to disable raid functionality on a P812 card? in ProLiant Servers (ML,DL,SL)

Is it possible to disable raid functionality on a P812 card?

Hmpf — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 19:57:22 GMT

Hi,

I like to use my hardware with zfs but since zfs has its own raid functionality I'd like to tell the raid controller to show the raw disks to my OS.

Only by removing the logical drives on the controller does not help. I thought there where a firmware bug somewhere so I have updated firmware in places I did not know had firmware(bios, raidctrler, disk enclosure, psu?), but to no avail.

Can someone help me?

My system:

HP ProLiant DL360 G7

HP Smart Array P410

HP Smart Array P812

HP D2000 Disk Enclosures

Re: Is it possible to disable raid functionality on a P812 card?

Torsten. — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 06:03:24 GMT

Except the smartarray P410 and P411i inside an Integrity server the smartarrays cannot present "raw" disks, but logical drives only.

If you really want to do this, consider to create a RAID0 on each single drive.

I prefer the hardware raids, because it is much easier to handle bad disks.

Re: Is it possible to disable raid functionality on a P812 card?

Hmpf — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 06:49:15 GMT

This seems correct as the only solution.

I did try to create a JBOD, thinking it would be a proper JBOD solution(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBOD#JBOD), but apparently HP is creating a BIG/SPAN logical disk. :(

Re: Is it possible to disable raid functionality on a P812 card?

Hmpf — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 06:53:21 GMT

"I prefer the hardware raids, because it is much easier to handle bad disks."

Good for you, to bad we whom like to control our hard drives by software raid solutions(eg. zfs) can't choose to do so easily.

Re: Is it possible to disable raid functionality on a P812 card?

Jimmy Vance — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 12:02:09 GMT

The RAID function cannot be disabled on the system you have. You can put each disk in its own array effectively creating many single RIAD 0 logical drives.

For Gen8 servers, the DL 360e and DL 380e models that ship with the B320i or B120i controller can have the RAID function completely disabled.

Re: Is it possible to disable raid functionality on a P812 card?

Torsten. — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 18:19:18 GMT

In the past I replaced several SAS disk connected to P400 and P410 smart array controllers under control of LVM or VxVM in 11.31 - it is a real pain.

However, the only workaround is creating a RAID0 on each disk, but in case of a disk swap you not only need to replace the disk, but also re-enable the (destroyed) RAId 0 on this disk, then adjust your software RAID.

Does it make sense or not?

It depends, but you can mirror a disk on controller A to a disk on another controller B this way to have more redundancy.

Re: Is it possible to disable raid functionality on a P812 card?

Hmpf — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 06:54:03 GMT

My biggest concern regarding having a raid0 on each disk is that I loose some extra space on each disk. But now a days when you have * TB large disks , that is no showstopper.