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I've inherited these old DL380 / Smart Array servers - now what?

 
W Sanders_2
Occasional Contributor

I've inherited these old DL380 / Smart Array servers - now what?

I've inherited responsibility for some Compaq DL380 servers running RedHat 6.2. I have been reminded these servers must never, ever go down!

The servers have Smart Array controllers as far as I can tell, there are /dev/ida devices mounted, but as far as I can tell no hooks to mangae or even view the status of the RAID array.

Can someone point me to a link where I can get started on gathering information on how to manage the raid on these bozes or at least tell remotely if a device has failed - I can't find any documentation anywhere. My guess is that the boxes are so old they came out back before Linux had raid management.

There are no /dev/ci* devices or raid* commands on the system as far as I can tell.

Thanks in advance..... I think my first task will be to upgrade the HW and SW as soon as possible.

FWIW, here is the lspci for these boxes:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Relience Computer CNB20HE (rev 05)
00:00.1 Host bridge: Relience Computer CNB20HE (rev 05)
00:01.0 RAID bus controller: Symbios Logic Inc. (formerly NCR): Unknown device 0010 (rev 02)
00:02.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82557 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 08)
00:03.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage IIC 215IIC [Mach64 GT IIC] (rev 7a)
00:04.0 System peripheral: Compaq Computer Corporation: Unknown device a0f0
00:05.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 80960RP [i960 RP Microprocessor/Bridge] (rev 05)
00:05.1 Memory controller: Intel Corporation 80960RP [i960RP Microprocessor] (rev 05)
00:0f.0 ISA bridge: Relience Computer: Unknown device 0200 (rev 4f)
00:0f.1 IDE interface: Relience Computer: Unknown device 0211
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage IIC 215IIC [Mach64 GT IIC] (rev 7a)
03:04.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82557 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 08)

-w
4 REPLIES 4
W Sanders_2
Occasional Contributor

Re: I've inherited these old DL380 / Smart Array servers - now what?

Found the source for all G1 DL380 info

at

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantdl380/index-1ghz.html

Looks like RH 6.X is not supported, but it's good to see that support has existed as recently as RH 8.0.

I think our approach will be to upgrade to new hardware as soon as possible and then "ladder up" the old G1 DL380's for less critical and clusterable tasks. These old DL380's never die . . . there are still colo's full of 'em.

-w

Re: I've inherited these old DL380 / Smart Array servers - now what?

Hi,

I know that RedHat had support for RAID systems from, at least, RedHat 7.2.

The raid card in Proliants use the cciss module (find it with the command "/sbin/lsmod" ).

Do a "df -h" to check existing partitions, it size and device names.

This is on a RedHat 7.2:
You can revirew info on the controller with:

cat /proc/mdstat
cat /proc/driver/cciss/cciss0
cat /proc/modules

Also, check your log files in /var/log/ and see which ones apply to the RAID partitions / controllers.


Hope this helps.


Josep
David Claypool
Honored Contributor

Re: I've inherited these old DL380 / Smart Array servers - now what?

There is some limited support for ProLiant peripherals for RedHat 6.2. Go to www.hp.com/support/files and choose ProLiant. Then use the 2nd half of the page to "Select by OS" and choose RH 6.2. Unfortunately, the only RAID controller supported is the SmartArray LC2 and many of the kernel-touching components have dependencies on specific kernel versions (this was before the re-architecture of the health driver to support errata kernels).

As far as managing your RAID, you need to separate the issue into software and hardware RAID. The RAID controller above is hardware RAID and the individual components are masked to the OS. This is different than the software RAID you can set up in RH. What you really want is the ProLiant-published version of the RAID driver plus the Insight Manager storage agents and the Array Configuration Utility.

Go to www.hp.com/linux and select ProLiant servers in the products section and on that resulting page there is a block called Documentation which has install guides and HOWTOs.
W Sanders_2
Occasional Contributor

Re: I've inherited these old DL380 / Smart Array servers - now what?

Thanks to those who responded - turns out only one is running RH 6.2, the others are 7.3 but do not have cciss installed. No /proc/modules in RH 6.2 or 7.3 and /proc/mdstat reports nothing in 7.3 and doesn't exist in 6.2. Lspci in 7.3 shows:

00:01.0 RAID bus controller: Symbios Logic Inc. (formerly NCR): Unknown device 0010 (rev 02)
05:00.0 Unknown mass storage controller: Compaq Computer Corporation Smart-2/P RAID Controller (rev 04)

I do see stuff in /proc/driver/cpqarray but nothing about the logical or physical drive status.

A visit to the site over the weekend shows 2 dead disks in the center slots under the CDROM of the DL380 - I have no idea which disks those are! (The orange status light is on steady.)

I wonder which is less risky - trying to upgrade / build new kernel for 7.3 to see the DL380 RAID and environmental features, or just upgrading to RH 8.

Do I even dare try replacing the dead drives? Can I assume if a new disk is inserted, the HW will take care of it without the RAID drivers installed?