how to check hardware mirror in linux

[Sreer]

Hi Experts,
How to check whether my linux root disk is mirrored in hardware level?
is it possible to check it from console?

server model is BL460c G1

bsv104:/home/rootsad # uname -a
Linux bsv104 2.6.16.60-0.27-smp #1 SMP Mon Jul 28 12:55:32 UTC 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
bsv104:/home/rootsad #


Thnx for your help

Rgds
Sree

[Matti_Kurkela]

BL460c G1 contains a SmartArray E200i RAID controller.

Too bad you did not identify your Linux distribution.

If you're running one of the Linux distributions that is supported on your hardware by HP (mainly RedHat and SuSE), you can download the RPM for a command-line tool "hpacucli" from the standard driver download pages: http://www.hp.com/go/support

If you're running some other distribution, search the package collection of that distribution for hardware RAID configuration tools: it's possible your distribution has already packaged one of the available free tools and you'll only have to install the correct package.

This page has links to the source code of all known free SmartArray tools:
http://cciss.sourceforge.net/
Look near the bottom of the page, at the chapter titled "CCISS Utilities". I think the "array-info" would be the most suitable for seeing if a drive is mirrored or not. On the other hand, "cciss_vol_status" would be the most useful for writing a script to monitor your disks and to report to you when a disk has failed.

MK

[Sreer]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

hpacucli is already installen in my box.

iam not sure what is the option to check?

How to check whether software mirror is available?

Rgds
Sree

[Reiner Rottmann]

You may display the defined arrays with

# hpacucli ctrl slot=1 array all show

You may query the mdadm RPM on a RHEL box:

# rpm -qa mdadm
mdadm-2.6.9-3.el5

mdadm is used to create, manage, and monitor Linux MD (software RAID) devices. mdadm is the de facto standard for Linux software RAIDs. Usually this is already installed.

To check, if there are already "multiple devices" software RAIDs active, you may check

# cat /proc/mdstat

If you use lvm, there is also a mirror mode that can be used as software RAID via device mapper.

It's usually not a good idea to stack software and hardware RAID together.

[ganaiwali · Accepted solution]

Sree,

the answer is simple , on HP sever if you have hpacucli installed and if you think that you have root disk configured in hardware aray/raid or is attached to hardware controller , then you need to simply execute

fdisk -l
and look for first HDD that you think is the root disk e.g /dev/cciss/c0d0

and grep that in below cmd

hpacucli ctrl all show config detail

hpacucli ctrl all show config detail | grep -i /dev/cciss/c0d0

more than likely you should see the the array A had that HDD /dev/cciss/c0d0

now your array A may be configured as a logical drive with 2 separate physical disks and that's where you can look for the mirroring information , e.g logical drive 1 should should show something like

Logical Drive: 1
Size: 68.3 GB
Fault Tolerance: RAID 1

or

while as RIAD 1 is (mirroring without parity or striping)


Logical Drive: 1
Size: 838.1 GB
Fault Tolerance: RAID 1+0

while as RAID 1+0 = mirroring + stripping

[abbasmohammed]

Hi

we can check using below commands

cat /proc/drivers/cciss/c0d0X

Thanks