Fault Tolerant RAID Setup

I recently had a drive fail on me. It took down the RAID, and our web site that was served off that drive. I thought I had the Raid setup right, but I guess I was wrong.
I have a slot loading G4 xServe. It's connected with both fiber channels to the xServe RAID. I had 2 drives on the left side, and 2 on the right. Both drives were set as Raid 1. I then used the Server to Raid 0 the drives.
Well, this didn't work. Can someone help me to set the server so that I won't lose the web site if another drive fails? If I didn't make sense, please ask.
Thanks!
Pismo G3 / Ti G4 1k / 2 xServe G5 / 2 xServe G4/RAID Mac OS X (10.4.3)

The only way you should have lost any data was if you
lost two disks on either side, in which case
you would lose the array.
You can also lose data if the software striping breaks irreparably, which has happened several times to me. I wouldn't ever use Apple's software striping on a mission critical RAID.
If it were my box, I'd only use the hardware RAID (mirroring) - leave the software level 0 out. Or get a 3rd drive for each side and use RAID 5 instead. Both these options, of course, force you to use two volumes instead or RAID'ing them into one, but it's much more stable that way.
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Similar Messages

RAID not fault tolerant on K7N2 Delta 2 Platinum?

Hi all,
I'd really appreciate your help with this puzzle.....
Got a new mobo & 3k Barton chip.... Installed 'em into rig described in my sig below.
Minimum hardware was installed for this operation:
new mobo & chip
1 gig mem card
CDRW
Floppy drive
SATA drives x2 each on separate SATA port
video card
Entered Bios on 1st boot:
Set SATA to enabled in IDE RAID window
Boot priority to CD Rom for install
Hard disk boot priority to SATA Mirror
F10'ed into NVRAID BIOS:
Set up the RAID as a mirror (RAID 1) with optimal stripe size
cleared & reformatted both discs
Mirror is recognised as healthy on reboot.
Booted into WIN XP SP2 slipstreamed install (this disc has been used successfully before on my previous mobo so I know it works)
Pressed F6 & loaded NV RAID class driver & NV nForce Storage Controller successfully
Did the Windows install routine & this is where it starts to deviate from what is written in the manual....
the request to install the RAID driver during the GUI part of the install never appeared (but this is described as a "might be prompted" in the manual so I wasn't too bothered by its non-appearance) and the driver floppy did spin up at one point so I assumed it had installed each drive automatically
Went into WinXP and finished the install...
Surprisingly, both RAID drives are now visible individually in the systray as removable drives under the SAFELY REMOVE HARDWARE icon.
Went into Disk Management expecting the Initialize & Convert Disk Wizard to appear but no sign of it: RAID drives are visible as ONE drive (as you would expect) but are NOT fault tolerant.
Things I've done differently each time I installed:
Tried to convert the mirror to a dynamic disc but this also failed every time.
Installed nForce2 system drivers before & after going into Disk Management on different installs
Installed NVRAIDMAN.exe and this reports the mirror as functional & healthy.
Left the floppy in the drive during the GUI part of WIN XP installing itself and removed it on other install
I've read the nvRAID FAQ & this isn't covered by it.
Can't find any reference to the Initialize & Convert Disk Wizard in Microsoft Help & Support, except in a Windows Server 2003 KB article, which I can't find again....
I've repeated the whole process several times to ensure I haven't missed anything, but the end result is always the same.
So I now have a weird mirror array that is not fault tolerant in Windoze Disk Management - is it doing what it's supposed to?
Any ideas??

As it seems you are doing extensive tests, i would suggest a simple one:
install as you have (where the RAID manager tells you it is setup correctly and redundant and windows does not see it as redundant), power off and take one drive off. Reboot and see the result. (it should still work and the controller should tell you that redundancy is not valid anymore)
After that, power off, replug the drive and see if it will reconstruct the array.
Try for the 2nd drive.
Then, you will be sure that redundancy is present...
It seems that with SATA, you can even hotswap the drives (hence the appearance of the drives in the SAFELY remove box).

XServe Raid Fault Tolerance

Hello all,
I am using an XServe Raid in my Netware environment. I have two Novell 5.1 servers, one is plugged in one half and the other is plugged into the other half of the XServe. It has been working good so far.
My question is, that I just thought of is if I have problems with it both server may be affected. How can I accomplish fault tolerance with the XServe? is there an easy way to put another Xserve on my network and have it copy the other one on a regular basis?
Thanks,
Jay

Sure, you can mirror the halves of the Xserve RAID, or do a scheduled replication. The first will give you availability, the second will be a backup.

Load Balancing & Fault tolerance in Oracle Apps

Hello
I am pretty new to Oracle Apps and Oracle 9iAS
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I have gone thru the following articles of metalink and some more from google
Configuring Web Cache as a Load Balancer for Application Servers
Create new middle tier node in existing Apps 11i environment using cloning and then load balance
Integrating and using Web Cache with Forms 9i for Load Balancing
Running Multiple OC4J Instances From a Single Install of 9iAS 1.0.2.2
LOAD BALANCING ORACLE APPLICATIONS ON UNIX
Load Balancing in 11i
OC4J Clustering Setup
OC4J Load Balancing for Forms 9i
Setting up 11i E-Business suite using a hardware load balancer
Sharing an APPL_TOP in Oracle Applications 11i
In Oracle Apps Concepts pdf, found that
Load balancing occurs when there are multiple installations of web server, forms server, reports server, concurrent manager server etc
Lets consider forms server component of middle tier
Can there be multiple INSTANCES of forms server within SINGLE INSTALLATION ???
If it has to be MULTIPLE INSTALLATIONS, then it will require multiple physical machines
What is software load balancing then ???
Also read that
Oracle 9i AS instance is combition of Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) and one or more instances of Oracle9iAS Container for J2EE (OC4J)
Thus software load balancing can be implemented for Web server component of middle tier using multiple instances of OC4J ???
Forms metrix server configuration is hardware load balancing ??
What about Oracle9iAS Web Cache clustering ??
Please clarify the doubts and suggest me the way
Thanks a lot

dear all can any one help me on the following;
We want to install Oracle Apps 11.5.9 on 4 IBM AIX 5L boxes, the first node
will hold the database , concurrent and Admin Tiers. as for the other 3 nodes
it will hold the Forms/Web Tiers and we need to use forms metrics for load
balancing taking into consideration that we can't use Shared APPL_TOP. we tried
to find the way how to install and configure this solution but all the
documents are talking aboout the concept only and this concept is applicable.
We need the exact steps on how do the installation either using rapidwiz or any
thing else
fadi

Fault tolerant, highly available BOSE XI R2 questions

Post Author: waynemr
CA Forum: Deployment
I am designing a set of BOSE XI R2 deployment proposals for a customer, and I had a couple of questions about clustering. I understand that I can use traditional Windows clustering to setup an active/passive cluster for the input/output file repositories - so that if one server goes down, the other can seamlessly pick up where the other left off. On this Windows-based active/passive cluster, can I install other BOSE services and will they be redundant, or will they also be active/passive. For example: server A is active and has the input/output file repository services and the Page Server. Server B is passive and also has the input/output file repository services and the Page Server. Can the page Server on B be actively used as a redundant Page Server for the entire BOSE deployment? (probably not, but I am trying to check just to make sure) If I wanted to make the most fault-tolerant deployment possible, I think I would need to:Setup two hardware load-balanced web front-end serversSetup two servers for a clustered CMSSetup two web application servers (hardware load-balanced, or can BOSE do that load-balancing?)Setup two Windows-clustered servers for the input/output file repositoriesSetup two servers to provide pairs of all of the remaining BOSE services (job servers, page servers, webi, etc.)Setup the CMS, auditing, and report databases on a cluster of some form (MS SQL or Oracle)So 10 servers - 2 Windows 2003 enterprise and 8 Windows 2003 standard boxes, not including the database environment.Thanks!

Post Author: jsanzone
CA Forum: Deployment
Wayne,
I hate to beat the old drum, and no I don't work for BusinessObjects education services, but all of your questions and notions of a concept of operations in regards to redundancy/load balancing are easily answered by digesting the special BO course "SA310R2" (BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R1/R2 Administering Servers - Windows). This course fully covers the topics of master/slave operations, BO's own load balancing operations within its application, and pitfalls to avoid. Without attending this course, I for one would not have properly understood the BusinessObjects approach and would've been headed on a collision course with disaster in setting up a multi-server environment.
Best wishes-- John.

NFS Fault Tolerance

I have two compute nodes in an Exadata System. Each Compute Node will have an NFS Mount to our NetApp. Will Oracle HANFS 12.1 work to provide fault tolerance for the NFS Mounts if I lose a compute node completely?

2757746 -
Because you mention these are NFS Mounts on your NetApp then Oracle HANFS probably doesn't apply. Are your NetApp NFS mounts exported through ACFS? Oracle HANFS operates only with Oracle ACFS file systems - which requires ASM. Typically ASM is not used with NetApp. I guess if you were running this on external servers with CRS and ASM on top of the Netapp storage - and the NFS mounts were created on ACFS using HANFS then this be possible. But in that setup, it isn't really an Exadata question - because it's the separate CRS cluster providing the fault tolerance - not Exadata.
BTW... As of 12.1.0.2 you can now use ACFS on Exadata - so in theory, you could setup HANFS mounts using ASM on the Exadata storage.
-Kasey

What is the difference with 1 Lync Standard Edition using VMware Fault Tolerant and 2 Lync Enterprise Edition in a cluster

Hi
As I will be planning to setup Lync on a virtual environment regardless if it is going to be the Standard or Enterprise edition.
I am thinking if we use 1 Lync Standard Edition for the FE Server with Fault Tolerance enabled, would it be as good as having 2 Lync Enterprise Edition in a cluster?
Thanks

Hi there,
the main difference between using Lync enterprise and lync standard is the High availability and scalability feature,
you will get fault tolrance setup with one lync standard edition running on whatever hyper-v and vmware platform, however this will not be an optimum highly available solution for the simple reason that upon a host server failure the image will move
to another available host server and users will lose their active session durin the move process.
on the other hand what you will gain if you the Enterprise edition is that you will have a unique identity to which all lync clients will be connecting and this identity is the lync pool identity which is in the background handled with multiple Front-End
servers and AV conferencing pools, mediation pools and so on.
In additioin when you have multiple front-ends in place, those front-ends will not work in active/passive mode as in a regular cluster, in contrairy all the servers will be active and handeling the work load.
hope i make it a bit clear, if yiu need more info i am ready
Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread
Thanks for the response, being a small environment of 300 users, standard edition would be more than enough for me but the fact for HA is very critical for me at this stage. That is why I am exploring the option of using VMware FT.
I don't quick get what you mean on the users having to move to another image as my understanding of FT is in the event of a host failure (not VM failure like bluescreen etc), the VM will fail over to another host with no lost in any ping etc.
So, in theory, the Lync Server VM would never know that the parent ESX host had failed and it needed to failover to another host. Hope my understanding is correct.
Thanks

Reformatting external drive to Mac OS Extended but maintaining RAID setup

Hi again,
I am considering taking the leap finance-wise and purchasing [this external drive|http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-WDH2Q20000N-Studio-Interface/dp/B00 16P7H3Q/ref=cmcr_pr_producttop]. It comes pre-formatted to HFS+ or something, so I guess I will need to reformat it to Mac OS Extended to use it with FCE.
So here are the questions:
*1. Would it make more sense to use it in RAID 0 mode for faster speed, or RAID 1 mode to keep a safer backup of my files?*
*2. Would reformatting it to Mac OS Extended for use with FCE still allow it to use normal RAID abilities?*
I realize this is not the right forum for posting this, but I thought someone here might be knowledgable about backup in general and how to best format an external drive for use with FCE, while maintaining the ability to have a "mirrored" RAID setup. Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance,
Sasha
Message was edited by: skalicki`

So just one more question because I'm pretty new to this whole RAID thing:
Say I formatted the drive to RAID 1 so in theory I have 1TB of space that is "mirrored" over to the other external drive.
*When I ingest my footage, will copies be stored to both drives, so if one fails, I will still have my media?*
I gathered this was the idea but didn't know how it works with FCE.

Raid Setup Guide 865/875 LSR/FIS2R Rev 1.04

On-Board Raid Setup MSI 865PE/875P
Revision History
Revision 1.0 (January 2004)
- Original Raid Article
Revision 1.01 (February 2004)
- Reformatted text and fixed spelling/grammar
Revision 1.02 (October 2004)
- Added warnings to temporarily disconnect ALL drives including Zip drives during formatting Raid drives for WinXP.
Revision 1.03 (October 2005)
- Reformatted text and added links to download Promise/Intel Raid floppies if user is missing them.
Revision1.04 (February 2006)
- Minor BB reformatting
Intro
Equipment List For Tests
Description of Tests
Pre-Raid Setup Bios Tweaks
Raid Setup On Promise Controller
Raid Setup On Intel Controller
--->Intel- Migrating from single SATA to Full Raid Array
Intro
This guide is intended to help people configure their Bios and setup Windows for Raid using the Intel ICH5R controller and the Promise FastTrak 378 controller. Although all the tests were done using Raid-0 the methods described should be virtually identical to setting up Raid-1 provided the user is aware of the fundamental differences between the two. It should be useful for anyone with an MSI 865PE/875P chipset on motherboards with LSR and FIS2R suffixes. Before continuing, please read the FAQ thread posted by Maesus and the Raid manual(s) that came with your motherboard. There's also some good info regarding Raid Here and Here and Here
Keep in mind this guide is intended as a reference to help you. It is not a manual. I do not work for MSI and my equipment and time are limited. You will have different equipment and different versions of software.
All the data below is based on tests that I ran and I tried to avoid using any theory that I did not test. If you feel I’ve missed something obvious or if you have something you feel should be added to make this guide clearer or simpler, please PM me with your thoughts. If you have a specific problem that this guide does not help you with, post a detailed thread in the forum on the main page.
Equipment List For Tests
MSI 875P FIS2R Motherboard
Bios 1.8
Enermax EG365P-VE (350w) PSU
P4 2.6c CPU
Kingston KHX-3200A2 2x512MB Memory
Radeon 9800Pro AIW Video Card
WD 400JB 40GB/8MB cache IDE Hdd
2-Seagate 80GB 7200.7 SATA Hdd's
Liteon 52x32x52 CDRW
Floppy Drive
Tests
Generally, tests were as follows:
Configure 2 SATA on Promise controller(serial3&4) as Raid0 and install WindowsXP Home SP1a on Raid
Configure 2 SATA on Promise controller(serial3&4) as Raid0 and add Raid to an existing WindowsXP installation on IDE drive(IDE1)
Configure 2 SATA on Intel Raid controller(serial1&2) as Raid0 and install WindowsXP Home SP1a on Raid
Configure 2 SATA on Intel Raid controller(serial1&2) as Raid0 and add Raid to an existing WindowsXP installation on IDE drive(IDE1)
Configure 1 SATA on Intel Raid controller(serial1) and install WindowsXP Home SP1a on it. Then add 2nd SATA on Intel Raid controller(serial2) and migrate to Raid0 using Intel Application Accelerator-Raid edition.
IDE drive used in these tests was pre-installed with a fresh copy of WinXP Home SP1a using default settings and the following drivers all from MSI setup CD and Raid Floppy Disks that came with motherboard:
Intel INF files - version 1002
Gigabit Lan drivers - 7.0.37.0
SoundMax drivers - 5.12.1.3538
Catalyst 3.7 & Multimedia Center drivers from standard ATI CD came with video card.
Pre-Raid BIOS Tweaks
Before I continue, I'd like to point out a few changes from the defaults that I alway make to Bios before I attempt a WinXP install or hardware change. I can't guarantee that they all apply to you but none should make things worse. If anything differs from a setting that you feel is fixing another problem you're having, by all means leave at your prefferred setting. Anything related to performance and overclocking can be raised again AFTER the Raid is all setup and everything is running smoothly.
Standard Cmos Features
The only thing I change here is to enable "32bit transfer mode" whenever I connect new devices to the Intel IDE controller.
Note: Devices attached to the Promise controller and the Intel Raid(when it is enabled) will NOT appear in the standard Cmos page
Advanced Bios Features
Everything on defaults is usually fine except I always change the following for WinXP:
APIC ACPI SCI IRQ - Enabled
Boot Device select is also on this page and you'll be changing it after all the hardware is setup; more later.
Advanced Cipset Features
Confirm that the memory timing "by SPD" is enabled
PNP/PCI Configurations
Clear NVRam option I always set to "YES" before the first boot after making hardware changes. I'm not sure how important this is but I understand that's what you're supposed to do. I believe it forces the motherboard to detect hardware changes. It reverts to "NO" after the reboot.
PCI/IDE Busmaster set to "enabled" to speed things up outside of Windows.
Integrated Peripherals (Before Raid for most flexibilty)
Onboard Promise IDE - Disabled if you have nothing attached to IDE3 and Serial 3&4
ON-Chip IDE Configuration:
Native Mode (Supported by WinXP- Allows all devices connected to IDE 1&2 and Serial 1&2 to be detected)
SATA Only or PATA Only (select the one that you boot XP with)
Keep SATA Active - Yes (if option available)
Keep PATA Active - Yes (if option available)
PATA Channel selection - Both (if option available)
Configure SATA as Raid - No (if option available)
Leave other settings here at default
Note: Some older Bios versions may appear different than above
Frequency/Voltage Control
Dynamic Overclocking - Disabled
Performance Mode - Slow
Dram Frequency - Auto
Adjust CPU Bus - 201 (for "c" type cpu's)
DDR Voltage - 2.65 (minimum for Dual-Channel Mem stability)
AGP Voltage - 1.55
Note: some features above may not appear with your Bios
Note: performance & overclocking features can be increased again AFTER the Raid array has been setup and is stable with Windows.
Raid On Promise Controller
This procedure should work for anyone adding a Raid array to a system already having XP installed on another drive on the Intel controller or intending to install Windows XP on the new Raid array.
Note: IDE 3 and Serial 3&4 connectors are controlled by the Promise controller.
Note: It is possible to setup Raid arrays using 2 IDE drives on IDE3 or even 2 SATA & 2 IDE drives. I only tested 2 SATA drives on Serial 3&4 connectors.
Note: It is possible to setup Raid 0+1 using 2 IDE drives on IDE3 and 2 SATA drives on Serial 3&4. See HERE for a related thread.
Note: It is possible to setup SATA or IDE drives on the Promise controller as separate drives NOT using Raid but I did not test this. See your manual.
- Attach the SATA drives to Serial 3&4 connectors and ensure that both power and data cables are securely connected. Most SATA drives do NOT need any changes to default jumper positions if any(check Hdd installation instructions).
- Boot into Bios
Integrated Peripherals:
Set Onboard Promise IDE - As Raid
- Save and reboot computer
- Use control-F keys during the boot(when prompted-goes by quickly) to enter the Promise Raid Bios.
Note: You will only be able to enter the promise Bios if you have set the Promise controller to "As Raid" AND there are devices connected and detected by the Promise Bios.
- Use the menus to configure the Raid for your preferences.
Note: I can't say which settings you should use for creating the Raid. It depends on many things. Do some research.
- After saving the Raid array, reboot to Bios.(you should see the configured array for a second or two during the post and it should be "functional")
- In Advanced bios Features>>Boot Device Select:
Set the order you prefer to boot from
- If you already have XP installed on another drive and are just adding the Raid for an extra drive, Ensure that the list is still appropriate and includes your XP drive.
- If you will be installing XP on the new Raid, make sure the new Raid array is in the boot list and any other hard drives are NOT.
Note: Typically, I put the disk with XP first and use F11 key during post to boot from another device. This is not required though.
- Save bios
Important!: If you are installing XP on the new Raid array, you should now shutdown and either disconnect or disable any other drives connected until AFTER XP is installed. This includes USB/Zip drives.(See "Bugs" below).
If Installing XP On The New Raid Array(others skip to below):
- Boot from the Windows XP Setup CD and use F6 key when prompted(at the beginning).
- Follow prompts to load the WinXP Promise FastTrack 376/378 Controller from the floppy that came with motherboard(If Required Download Floppy Here). There are a number of different choices on the floppy. PICK THE RIGHT ONE.
Note: if using Win2K with the floppy, you can scroll down to get more driver options on this screen. It's not readily apparent on the screen.
- Continue setup and Windows should now show you the new Raid array as a single drive available to install to. If it shows other drives that you have connected, re-read the "important" note above and the related section on "Bugs" below.
- When XP setup makes its first re-boot, make sure the floppy has been removed or depending on your settings it may give you a scary moment. Yes I did this(tries to boot from floppy).
- After XP is up and running, you can re-connect/re-enable any drives you disconnected earlier. If they have been formatted, they should show up immediately and be assigned letters after your CD/DVD drives.
- You can also install the Promise Array Manager software(from MSI CD utilities tab or download) which adds some array management settings.
If XP Already Installed On Another Drive(and you're just adding the Raid as an extra storage disk):
- Boot into WindowsXP.
- As Windows starts, it should detect a new Raid device and offer to install drivers.
- Select Cancel. It will tell you that it was unable to install new device. If you want you can confirm the new device is present by checking Windows device Manager. It should show the new device with a yellow exclamation mark beside it since the drivers aren't installed yet.
- Download the appropriate drivers or use the MSI CD that came with motherboard.
Note: The MSI CD detects devices connected and shows available drivers/utilities depending on what it sees. You might not have seen the Promise drivers when using the CD before but now that you have a Raid array connected to it, the drivers will be availble from the MSI setup CD.
- Install the drivers and re-boot
- Device Manager should now show the Raid properly identified by XP.
- If the Raid array was not previously formatted, you can now use Windows Disk Manager (Start > Run and type diskmgmt.msc) to Initialize and then format the Raid array.
- The Raid array should now show in Windows Explorer with it's own drive letter.
Bugs/Surprises
- Trying to install WinXP on the Promise Raid while my IDE drive was connected to the Intel IDE connector resulted in Windows installing boot files to the IDE drive and the rest on the Raid drives. This was especially bad since I had another installation of XP on the IDE drive which was overwritten. The work-around was to disable the IDE drive until AFTER XP was setup on the Raid array.
Update: There have been a few posts on the forum since I wrote this guide where people installing XP have had problems similar to the one above with USB/Zip drives connected so i am adding them to the list of drives to disconnect while installing XP.
- When setting "Boot Device Select", if I selected "NO" for "boot from other devices", the motherboard would ignore my selection and still boot from other devices if the ones in the list were unusable.
- Be gentle with SATA connectors on the motherboard. They can stand firm downward pressure but not a lot of side-to-side pressure.
Raid On Intel Controller
This procedure should work for anyone adding 2 SATA hard drives for a Raid array on a system already having XP installed on another drive or intending to install XP on the new Raid array.
Note: IDE 1&2 and Serial 1&2 connectors are controlled by the Intel ICH5R controller. Only Serial 1&2 can be configured for Raid arrays.
You can also install a single SATA drive and configure the system for Raid BEFORE installing XP on this drive if you intend to add another SATA drive later to form a Raid array. This method was also tested. I will refer to this for the rest of the thread as the Raid-Ready Method.
Note: If you install WinXP on a single SATA drive without enabling Raid and loading Raid drivers, you will NOT be able to migrate the XP disk to a Raid array at a later date. Reinstalling XP would be required.
Note: There is no performance advantage to having a single drive with Raid enabled. But doing so makes the disk Raid-ready and XP reinstall unnecessary.
- Attach the SATA drive(s) to Serial 1&2 connectors and ensure that both power and data cables are securely connected. Most SATA drives do NOT need any changes to default jumper positions if any(check Hdd installation instructions).
- Boot into Bios
- In "Integrated Peripherals>>On-Chip IDE Configuration" set:
Native Mode (Supported by WinXP- Allows all devices connected to IDE 1&2 and Serial 1&2 to be detected)
SATA Only (Even if you will be booting XP from a PATA drive)
Keep PATA Active - Yes
PATA Channel selection - Both
Configure SATA as Raid - Yes
Leave other settings here at default
Note: Some older Bios versions may appear different than above.
- Save Bios and reboot computer
- Use control-I keys during post(when prompted-goes by quickly) to enter the Intel Raid Bios Utility.
Note: If you are using the single SATA Raid-Ready Method, you can skip the steps involving the Intel Raid utility. Go to the step for setting Boot device select in main Bios.
Note: You will only be able to enter the Intel Raid Bios if you have set the "Configure SATA as Raid" option to "YES" AND there are devices connected and detected by the Intel Raid Bios.
- Use the menus to configure the Raid for your preferences.
Note: I can't say which settings you should use for creating the Raid. It depends on many things. The Intel utility does describe the different options well though.
- After saving the Raid array, reboot to Bios.(you should see the configured array for a second or two during the post and it should be "functional")
- In Advanced bios Features>>Boot Device Select:
Set the order you prefer to boot from;
If you already have XP installed on another drive and are just adding the Raid for an extra drive, Ensure that the list is still appropriate and includes your XP drive.
If you will be installing XP on the new Raid or using Raid-Ready Method, make sure the new Raid array or raid-ready drive is in the boot list and any other hard drives are NOT.
Note: Typically, I put the disk with XP first and use F11 key during post to boot from another device. This is not required though.
- Save bios
Important!: If you are installing XP on the new Raid array or using the Raid-Ready Method, you should now shutdown and either disconnect or disable any other hard drives connected until AFTER XP is installed. This includes Zip/USB drives. (See "Bugs" below).
If Installing XP On The New Raid Array Or Using Raid-Ready Method(others skip to below):
- Boot from the Windows XP Setup CD and use F6 key when prompted(at the beginning).
- Follow prompts to load the IAA Raid Driver for ICH5R (If Required Download Floppy Here) from the floppy that came with motherboard. I only had 1 driver to choose from on my floppy but if you have more, CHOOSE THE RIGHT ONE!
- Continue and Windows Setup should now show you the new Raid array or Raid Ready drive as a single drive available to install to. If it shows other drives that you have connected, re-read the "important" note above and the related section on "Bugs" below.
- When XP setup makes its first re-boot, make sure the floppy has been removed or depending on your settings it may give you a scary moment. Yes I did this(tries to boot from floppy).
- After XP is up and running and INF files and other important drivers installed, you can re-connect/re-enable any hard drives you disconnected earlier. If they have been formatted, they should show up immediately and be assigned letters after your CD/DVD drives.
- You can also install the Intel IAA-Raid Program(from MSI CD utilities tab or download) which gives some info and adds the array management settings(Not many. Just the enable/disable cache setting and the migrate to raid option).
If XP Already Installed On Another Drive(and you're just adding the Raid as an extra storage disk):
- Boot into WindowsXP.
- As Windows starts, it should detect a new Raid device and offer to install drivers. Select Cancel. It will tell you that it was unable to install new device. If you want you can confirm the new device is present by checking Windows device Manager. It should show the new device with a yellow exclamation mark beside it since the drivers aren't installed yet.
- Download the appropriate drivers or use the MSI CD that came with motherboard.
Note: The MSI CD detects devices connected and shows available drivers/utilities depending on what it sees. You might not have seen the IAA Raid drivers when using the CD before but now that you have a Raid array connected to it, the drivers will be availble from the MSI setup CD.
- Install the drivers and re-boot
Note: If the IAA Raid program detects that the Raid controller is not enabled or no device is present, it will NOT allow you to install the drivers/utility.
- Using Windows Device Manager should now show the Raid device properly with no problems.
- If the Raid array has not been formatted, you can now use Windows Disk Manager (Start > Run and type diskmgmt.msc) to Initialize and then format the Raid array.
- The new drive should now appear in Windows Explorer with it's own drive letter.
Bugs/Surprises
- Trying to install WinXP on the Promise Raid while my IDE drive was connected to the Intel IDE connector resulted in Windows installing boot files to the IDE drive and the rest on the Raid drives. This was especially bad since I had another installation of XP on the IDE drive which was overwritten. The work-around was to disable the IDE drive until AFTER XP was setup on the Raid array. It is safe to assume this can occur with the Intel controller as well since I believe the problem occurs because of how WinXP setup addresses the hard drives.
Update: There have been a few posts on the forum since I wrote this guide where people installing XP have had problems similar to the one above with USB/Zip drives connected so i am adding them to the list of drives to disconnect while installing XP.
- Be gentle with SATA connectors on the motherboard. They can stand firm downward pressure but not a lot of side-to-side pressure.
Migrating XP System Disk To Raid On Raid-Ready System
This part describes how to use the Intel Application Accelerator-Raid edition to migrate an existing WinXP system disk (1-SATA) to a 2-SATA Raid array.
This procedure is actually very well documented in the last part of the Intel SATA Raid manual that ships with the motherboard but I thought I’d add it to make this thread more complete.
Please note that to use this feature of the Intel raid software the disk you are migrating FROM must have been made Raid-Ready as described above. Basically, this means that Raid should have been enabled in the Bios and the drivers installed from floppy during the WinXP install.
Note: I tested this by migrating to a Raid0 array but Raid1 should work also if the latest Bios and version of Intel-Raid application used.
- Open the Intel Application Accelerator Raid utility.
- With the “Raid” tab window open, right-click on “Raid volume” and select “Create from Existing Disk” as seen below.
- Follow the next several steps to choose the type of Raid array and the strip size.
Note: 64kb strip size is good for general purpose and 128kb best for most desktops and work stations according to Intel. Anything smaller is for specialized purposes. You should research this a little because you can’t change it after easily.
- After configuring the array for your preferences, you will face a couple of warnings telling you that “All data will be deleted from the Raid-controlled drive(s) and is unrecoverable” and ask if you want to continue. Obviously all data(if any) on the new drive you’re adding will be lost but the OS and other data on the disk you’re migrating FROM will be striped to the new array and will remain intact.
Note: Any complex disk procedure such as this carries the risk of losing data. A backup of the disk is important BEFORE beginning the migration process. Don't say I didn't warn you.
- The migration process can take a long time. You should see the window below during the operation.
Note: With just a default WinXP installation, migrating to 2-80Gb drives took about an hour for me.
- After the migration is complete, you will be prompted to re-boot to complete the process.
- During the reboot, as the Intel Bios comes up for a couple of seconds(don’t blink) you will see the 2 drives configured as an array and they will be listed as “functional”.
- After the reboot, you should have a fully functional Raid array with 2 SATA drives and all data from the single drive will have been striped or mirrored into the second one. Check Windows Disk manager(Start > Run and type diskmgmt.msc) to see the status of the new drive. See bugs/surprises below.
Bugs/Surprises
The only problem I had with this test came in the form of a small surprise after everything was completed and the computer had rebooted. Although the Intel Application Accelerator showed everything functioning normally, Windows explorer showed my Raid drive as 74Gb in size instead of the 150Gb or so that I expected. After checking Windows disk Manager (Start > Run and type diskmgmt.msc), I found that the missing GB’s were in fact there but were unformatted. Unfortunately, Disk Manager does not seem to allow merging or extending partitions so I ended up using Partition Magic 8 to format the empty space and merge it with the rest of the partition. This seemed to work fine and I ended up with a single 150Gb drive showing up in Windows Explorer. I also briefly tested the performance to confirm that it was operating as a Raid array.
I know there is a utility for Win2K called DiskPart.exe that is run from command console to extend NTFS partitions but if anyone knows of an easier way or a FREE utility that will format/merge NTFS partitions that they have confirmed works, please PM me so that I can include a reference to it here.
All the data above is based on tests that I ran and I tried to avoid using any theory that I did not test. If you feel I’ve missed something obvious or if you have something you feel should be added to make this guide clearer or simpler, please PM me with your thoughts. If you have a specific problem that this guide does not help you with, post a detailed thread in the forum on the main page.
Vango44

Great work vango44!
Here are some RAID performance statistics I gathered while testing RAID on my system. The testing software was Winbench 99. The hard drives tested were new Seagate ST380013AS drives, formatted NTFS. Winbench was running on a third drive that is not included in the tests and should not affect the results.
The drives were reformatted between tests and chkdsk'ed to try and keep things "apples to apples".
No hardware or software changes other than the RAID setup/connections were made between tests.
Higher numbers mean better performance.
I also ran the same tests on the newish WD Raptor 10K drives:
I couldn't stand all the noise the Raptors made, so I returned them.
On my motherboard:
SATA 1 & 2 = Intel RAID controller
SATA 3 & 4 = Promise RAID controller
If the test title does not include "RAID", then it was a single drive test.
Unfortunately, I don't have a spreadsheet version of the above stats. Otherwise I'd create nice bar charts for us and it's would be easier to deduce performance.
Perhaps some kind reader will OCR the pictures, put them into Excel, and make some nice bar charts for us?
Hope the info helps.

Fault Tolerance - MCS 7825 H3 & MCS 7835 H2 Servers

Hi,
I have enabled network fault tolerance on my CUC and CCM Servers, i thought after enabling the network fault tolerance the server would change the mac address to Virtual mac address which indeed it may affect the licenses.
But after enabling fault tolerance and restarting the server also i didn't see any change in the MAC ID. Its the same MAC ID.
Pls advice.
Regards
Jagadish G

Hi Jagadish,
do u get the option of 1000 MB/s when u configure set network nic eth0 speed ? can u check?
secondly, Bond 0 would be showing Auto disabled which cannot be changed.
Can u share snapshot of show netowrk failover?
regds,
aman

Multiple RAID setups in one Xserve?

Hi hope you can help me, we are a small architecture practice in the market for a new server and we are considering an Xserve and Xserve RAID system. I would quite like to set up the Xserve unit to use two of the drives in RAID 1 to mirror the operating system. My question is it possible and/or wise to have multiple RAID sets in the Xserve RAID unit? For example using four of the bays for 4x500Gb in RAID 1 (1Tb storage) for projects, and then using another 2 bays for 2x250Gb in RAID 1 as well for say Mail, maybe even another 2 bays for holding user home accounts. I understand that with share points this isn't strictly necessary but it seems to make sense to keep functions separate across hard drives for quick replacements. Or is this a lot to ask of a single RAID controller?
Also how easy is to add storage to an existing RAID set-up without destroying the data?; say we wanted to increase the 1Tb project storage to 2Tb easily.
Thanks for your help in advance.
Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Andrew,
I think you are over complicating you setup.
If you do multiple RAID sets the you are really anti-optimiziung. If you asked "How can I get the least performance and lowest capacity out of a RAID?" then I would suggest three mirrored disks w/ spare per controller.
You would have far better performance and capacity if you were to put two drives in the Xserve to mirror, then set up your RAID as RAID 5 across 6 disks with 1 spare (default config).
With Disk Utility you can build multiple file systems on the RAID, so you could slice it up, but again that could be wasting space.
When you get the RAID setup as one file system do not share the root. Set up sub dirs to share:
/Volumes/Raid1 --your RAID root, aka mount point.
/Volumes/Raid1/Mail -- mail
/Volumes/Raid1/Users -- Home dirs
/Volumes/Raid1/Projects -- your production storage
/Volumes/Raid1/Backup -- Save disk images of your server and workstations here.
And yes, changing the size of a file system means wiping it out and restoring from backup.
Also consider the 750GB drives, it's a lot more storage for not that much more money.
Reese

Deterministic Fault Tolerant Load Balancing

The USA has an unfortunate penchant for granting patents that arguably do not merit patent protection. Some of these are things that are blindingly obvious. Others are just not sufficiently inventive.
Anyway, since I have no funds for patent searches, nor patent applications, and there are some other complications, I've decided to post this to establish prior-art for an algorithm. I don't claim that the algorithm is clever, nor novel, nor even that it violates no existing patents. This posting is simply to ensure that to the extent that someone might be granted a patent on it, they can't, because it has already been published.
The Java connection is that I've done a fair amount of the work required to turn this into a real system in Java.
Suppose you have set of processors, p0 thru pn-1, and each piece of work to be performed by a processor has some number k associated with it. The problem is to allocate the work roughly equally across the subset of processors that are actually functioning. Further, over a period of time, a series of related pieces of work may arrive with the same k. To the maximum possible extent you want each of the related pieces of work to be handled by the same processor. If a processor fails, you want its work to be distributed across the remaining processors, but still maintaining the property that pieces of work with a given value for k are handled by the same processor. In general we assume that the k values are randomly spread through a large number space.
The motivation for these requirements is that for a given k the processor may be caching information that improves performance. Or it may be enforcing some invariant, such as in a lock manager where each request for a given lock must go to the same processor, or it clearly won't function.
To achieve this, construct a list of integers of size n. Element i contains i if processor i is functional, and -1 otherwise.
Calculate k mod n, and use the result as an index into the list. If the value contained there is non-negative, then it is the number of the processor to use. If it is -1, remove the element from the list, decrement the value of n and repeat. Continue until a processor number is found.
This scheme is fault tolerant to a degree, in that the resulting system has a high level of availability.
It also has the property that the failure of a processor only impacts on the allocation of pieces of work that would have been allocated to the failed processor. It does not result in a complete rearrangement of the work allocations. This makes things a lot simpler when dealing with things like distributed lock managers.
The fault tolerance can be improved by an extension of the algorithm that allows a distributed master/slave arrangement, where the master number for a given k is determined as above, and a slave number is obtained by treating the master as if it were not functioning. Each processor is a master for some subset of the k values, and is a slave for another subset. For any given master, each of the other processors is a slave for a roughly equal portion of the given master's subset of the k values.
There are some boring details that I've not discussed, such as how an entity wanting work to be done determines which processors are functioning, and the stuff related to the exact sequence of steps that must be performed when a processor breaks, or is repaired. I don't believe anyone could patent them because once you start thinking about it, the steps are pretty obvious.

I wouldn't be so sure that a simple post to the java forums
is all you need to prove this 'prior-art' is it ?
Don't you need to actually use it? Or have you seen a laywer
and this was their advice. Even if you have no money for it Im sure
there are free legal services; even universities, you could contact.
I don't believe anyone could patent them because once you
start thinking about it, the steps are pretty obvious.The steps of anything a generally simple, it's the putting-them-together
that you can patent :)

Fault tolerant EJBs

Hello,
I'm trying to set up a fault tolerant EJB service. I have two application servers with EJB's deployed on them. The two deployments are identical. Client is a portal application. The EJB client configuration file sun-web.xml looks like this:
>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE sun-web-app PUBLIC
"-//Sun Microsystems Inc.//DTD Sun ONE Application Server 7.0 Servlet 2.3//EN"
"file:/etc/opt/SUNWps/dtd/sun-web-app_2_3-0.dtd">
<sun-web-app>
<ejb-ref>
<ejb-ref-name>ejb/userService</ejb-ref-name>
<jndi-name>corbaname:iiop:server1:3700,iiop:server2:3700#ejb/userService</jndi-name>
</ejb-ref>
<ejb-ref>
<ejb-ref-name>ejb/chosenService</ejb-ref-name>
<jndi-name>corbaname:iiop:server1:3700,iiop:server2:3700#ejb/chosenService</jndi-name>
</ejb-ref>
</sun-web-app>
Everything works fine as long as server1 is up. The system doesn't work after I shut it dow. On the client I get this exception:
>
[#|2006-02-01T13:13:07.939+0200|WARNING|sun-appserver-ee8.1_02|javax.enterprise.resource.corba.S1AS-ORB.rpc.transport|_ThreadID=12;|"IOP00410201: (COMM_FAILURE) Connection failure: socketType: IIOP_CLEAR_TEXT; hostname: 10.111.143.169; port: 3700"
org.omg.CORBA.COMM_FAILURE: vmcid: SUN minor code: 201 completed: No
at com.sun.corba.ee.impl.logging.ORBUtilSystemException.connectFailure(ORBUtilSystemException.java:2257)
at com.sun.corba.ee.impl.logging.ORBUtilSystemException.connectFailure(ORBUtilSystemException.java:2278)
at com.sun.corba.ee.impl.transport.SocketOrChannelConnectionImpl.<init>(SocketOrChannelConnectionImpl.java:208)
at com.sun.corba.ee.impl.transport.SocketOrChannelConnectionImpl.<init>(SocketOrChannelConnectionImpl.java:221)
at com.sun.corba.ee.impl.transport.SocketOrChannelContactInfoImpl.createConnection(SocketOrChannelContactInfoImpl.java:104)
at com.sun.corba.ee.impl.protocol.CorbaClientRequestDispatcherImpl.beginRequest(CorbaClientRequestDispatcherImpl.java:153)
at com.sun.corba.ee.impl.protocol.CorbaClientDelegateImpl.request(CorbaClientDelegateImpl.java:127)
at com.sun.corba.ee.impl.protocol.CorbaClientDelegateImpl.is_a(CorbaClientDelegateImpl.java:244)
Why doesn't it switch to server2? Did I miss something?

Hi,
did you try to specify the JVM parameter -Dcom.sun.appserv.iiop.endpoints=<server1>:port1,<server2>:port2 for the jvm where the client is running?

Udev/dmraid not picking up all partitions of a fake RAID setup! [EDIT]

Hey all. I've been having a problem with my RAID setup in Arch. At first Arch wasn't picking up a partition on one of my arrays, (a single large NTFS partition on a 2TB array between two 1TB drives) but after re-creating the RAID array in the Intel Storage Manager I have a different problem. Arch now find the single large partition, but now /dev/mapper isn't populated with the other two partitions on the other array that my operating systems are on (Arch and Windows), when it used to just fine! The only thing I changed was re-creating the partition table on the other array, so I don't know what's going on.
Upon trying to boot, GRUB comes back with the error described on the wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In … oot_device
However I can't boot into the fallback image either! This means that I can't apply the fix as described in the wiki.
I'm starting to think there is a limitation in Arch where it can only handle a certain number of mapper devices (seems to be 3), or maybe it only detects the partitions on the first detected array? Now that I recreated the partition table on the larger array, it seems like that's the array that's detected first in both a GParted live session and Arch. But in a live GParted session, /dev/mapper was fully populated with all of my disks and partitions... so why is it that Arch can only find the partitions on one of the RAID arrays?
If you guys need any additional information just let me know... I really want to get my Arch setup up and working so I don't have to use Windows all that often (only games that don't work well in Wine).
EDIT: Changed post and title to reflect new problem after recreating the 2TB array
Last edited by pad76 (2011-08-11 13:15:36)

Does anyone know if I can damage my arch install by using mkinitcpio through a Debian live-cd? I'm going to try and use one to remake my initrd by chrooting using this guide: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In … oot_device
Basically the commands I'm looking to execute would be this:
# mount /dev/mapper/isw_ArchRaidPartition /mnt/
# mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
# mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
# mount -t sysfs none /mnt/sys
# chroot /mnt /bin/bash
(edit mkinitcpio.conf according to wiki, inserting the "sleep" hook)
# mkinitcpio -p 3.0-arch
So my question is would using the commands from a debian live distro work? I have to use debain since arch live-installs don't detect my arch raid partition, like how I described above. I also can't boot into fallback.

Udev/dmraid not picking up all partitions of a fake RAID setup!

Hey all. I've been having a problem with my RAID setup in Arch. At first Arch wasn't picking up a partition on one of my arrays, (a single large NTFS partition on a 2TB array between two 1TB drives) but after re-creating the RAID array in the Intel Storage Manager I have a different problem. Arch now find the single large partition, but now /dev/mapper isn't populated with the other two partitions on the other array that my operating systems are on (Arch and Windows), when it used to just fine! The only thing I changed was re-creating the partition table on the other array, so I don't know what's going on.
Upon trying to boot, GRUB comes back with the error described on the wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In … oot_device
However I can't boot into the fallback image either! This means that I can't apply the fix as described in the wiki.
I'm starting to think there is a limitation in Arch where it can only handle a certain number of mapper devices (seems to be 3), or maybe it only detects the partitions on the first detected array? Now that I recreated the partition table on the larger array, it seems like that's the array that's detected first in both a GParted live session and Arch. But in a live GParted session, /dev/mapper was fully populated with all of my disks and partitions... so why is it that Arch can only find the partitions on one of the RAID arrays?
If you guys need any additional information just let me know... I really want to get my Arch setup up and working so I don't have to use Windows all that often (only games that don't work well in Wine).

Please do not crosspost. Follow forum rules.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=124247
Closing..

Fault Tolerant RAID Setup

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