configure raid on DL 160 Gen8 ubuntu

[bherachit]

Please help to configure software raid on DL160 gen 8 ubuntu os.

what version of ubuntu os?

what raid level 0,1,5, or else are support?

Are there any document to brief describe and/or support how to configure

Bherachit

[Matti_Kurkela]

The base model RAID array controller in a DL160 Gen8 is Dynamic Smart Array B120i. It is a software RAID controller, with the configurator and boot-time support included in the server firmware.

When used with a HP-provided binary driver (= the thing that makes it a "Dynamic Smart Array B120i"), it is compatible with true hardware Smart Array controllers, so you would have an easy upgrade path. It supports RAID 0 and 1 in basic configuration; if you add an extra 512 MB FBWC cache module, the RAID 5 functionality will be enabled.

However, the binary driver is available for selected Operating System versions only, and unfortunately for you, no version of Ubuntu is supported at all. The supported Linux distributions are RHEL 5 and 6, CentOS 5 and 6, Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 and 6, SLES 10 and 11, and OpenSuSE 11.4. Since the driver is provided as binary only, you can't even get the source code and compile it yourself to an unsupported distribution.

But the actual hardware is a generic AHCI-compatible SATA/SAS controller integrated in the Intel C600 chipset, and support for AHCI compatible controllers is a standard Linux kernel feature. (When you install the HP binary driver to a supported version of Linux, you have to specifically blacklist/disable the standard AHCI driver or else it will take over the controller instead of the HP binary driver.)

If you use the standard Linux AHCI driver, you can use Linux native software RAID. This will support RAID levels 0,1, 4, 5 and 6, but I don't think it can use the optional 512 MB FBWC module, so it may not perform quite as well as the HP binary driver in RAID5 mode. I don't think you can fit enough disks in a DL160 Gen8 chassis to benefit from RAID 6.

In RAID 0 and 1 modes, there probably isn't a significant performance difference.