Try to make raid 0 in a DS20E

[Francisco José Pavón]

Hi:
im trying to install a Tru64 5.1b in a raid 0 for the system disk. the controller is an aic-7895 but i can't find the option in the bios to configure it or the way to do it ??is it possible to do it or do i have to create the raid by software?

[Ralf Puchner]

it seems there is no raid controller built in. Otherwise have you tried the "run bios pza0" command?

[Francisco José Pavón]

P00>>>run bios pza0
Runbios available only prior to booting. Reinit system and try again

[Francisco José Pavón]

sorry for the previous reply.
After reboot the server i enter the command but don't say nothig
P00>>>run bios pza0
P00>>>

[Christian Klein_1 · Accepted solution]

There is an onboard aic-7895 scsi controller on the main logic board of a DS20E. It does not support hardware RAID. If you want hardware RAID 0, you will need to acquire a different controller like a KZPCC.

You cannot install Tru64 onto a software RAID level 0. You can install it onto LSM volumes (an option at installation) and then later mirror (RAID 1) the system disk after the installation completes provided you have a LSM license. This software RAID level 1 will have higher read performance (similar to RAID 0) than a single disk, but slower write performance.

I believe that striping can be performed without a license however mirroring and RAID 5 cannot. Later after installation, the /usr and /var filesystems could be moved to striped LSM volumes via addvol/rmvol (if you have an advfs advanced utilities license and are using advfs) or vdump piped through vrestore (detailed on the vrestore man page EXAMPLE 3) plus resetting /etc/fdmns/usr_domain/* links but this way is a bit trickier).

The / and primary swap devices need to be devices that unix sees as disk partitions or LSM simple volumes. We would not be able to boot off of a striped volume.

run bios pza0 will run the bios configuration for a KZPSA, an older fast and wide differential scsi controller. You may not have one in your machine.

To actually run the bios configuration on your onboard controller, you must:
>>> set auto_action halt
>>> init (system will reset)
>>> show bios
0 0 16 0 Adaptec AIC-7895
0 2 0 0 NCR 53C875
0 2 1 0 NCR 53C875
>>>run bios 00 00 16

Note that your output may differ a bit from above and that you probably do not NEED to make any bios changes to your configuration.

Hope this helps,

Christian Klein
HP Tru64 Unix Support

[Francisco José Pavón]

thanks for your help, i will follow your recomendatios.