HP Proliant ML310 Raid controller

[clarkem]

I have an HP Proliant ML310, supplied with an AAR-2610SA raid controller, as the on-board controller doesn't handle raid 5. We are running SUSE open 10.2 on the box, and everything is ok - 4 250GB SATA disks, 2*15GB mirrored for o/s, the rest as raid 5 for storage. However, we recently had a disk go out, and there was no fuss made - no /var/log/messages alerts from aacraid, no status light messages. The only way of knowing was to reboot, and watch the raid bios messages. Tweaking the SATA cable on the off-line device, it recovered and went into rebuild mode, but still no warnings evident.

Is there any way of interrogating the controller from the o/s? any bios calls, etc?

HP's start smart doesn't even see the controller or any bootable disks. their hpacucli utility does not see any controllers (when I could run it, the rpm does not install with suse 10.2).

I am assuming that this is because the HP stuff expects me to use the on-board contoller (disabled at set-up time)?

The card is obviously Adaptec, but they won't help, as they claim it's a Dell/HP OEM product.

Anybody know how to monitor the controller in real time and warn of disk errors?

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

I beleive the problem is the new RAID controller. It seems to be unsupported by either the hardware or the OS.

Note you can't boot Linux off RAID 5.

I think a different part is called for.

SEP

[clarkem]

I found that you can't boot Linux off raid 5 by trial and error, the box kept crashing - and I noticed that the windows server software in another NAS booted off a mirror partition. Hence my use of the mirror partition to boot linux. Anyone know why this is so? Does this mean that all operating systems cannot boot off Raid 5?

What makes you believe the controller is unsupported? It seems to be a 6 channel version of the 2410. If you can provide evidence, I may be able to get our supplier to provide a replacement. Any recommended controllers?

I'm a bit annoyed by Adaptec disowning the device, as it's clearly made by them - the bios says so.

Thanks for information provided.