Intel Xserve + Xserve RAID + SCSI

I have a requirement for an Intel Xserve system that I can connect an Xserve RAID and SCSI tape autoloader to. It seems that Apple won't let me configure a system with a SCSI card and a fibre channel card in it at the same time, and repeated phone calls to them have yielded precisely nothing (very disappointed with the lack of professionalism and knowledge displayed by the Apple sales and tech staff on this matter).
Can I have such a configuration? It seems that I can only fit a fibre channel PCIe card in expansion slot 1 as it is too long to fit in slot 2 which is limited to 6" long cards. I've seen that Atto do PCIe SCSI cards but there is no mention on their site about whether they will fit/work in slot 2 of an Xserve and emails to them have gone unanswered.
If anyone has any info on this, or could point me in the direction of the info, I would be very grateful. Or if what I want isn't possible, ideas on how to back up a 7TB array without direct attached tape storage would also be appreciated.

Actually, having just looked at the store, Apple
don't seem to offer any PCIe SCSI cards, just a PCI-X
one with a PCI-X riser. Would this configuration stop
me using a PCIe card in slot 2?
Avoid the Apple BTO SCSI card like the plague. It's junk.
It's really a rebranded LSI Logic 22320. Ours never worked
right in our Xserve G5; we replaced it with an ATTO UL4D and
all of our problems went away. The right card for the intel
Xserve is the ATTO UL5D or UL5D low profile (both are PCIe).
Link is here:
http://www.attotech.com/hostadapter.html
The Apple-rebranded LSI Logic 22320 sits on a shelf gathering
dust.
Russ
Xserve G5 2.0 GHz 2 GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.8) Apple Hardware RAID, ATTO UL4D, Exabyte VXA-2 1x10 1u

Similar Messages

RAID for Intel based Xserve

Why haven't we heard anything about a RAID card for the Intel based Xserves? Why did Apple release this product without a RAID card? Can anyone shed any light when and if Apple will provide a RAID card for the new Xserve? Will one of the older cards work in the Intel Xserve? I'm really annoyed Apple released the new Xserve without a RAID card option.
G5 Duel 2GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I'm guessing it has something to do with the hybrid
SAS/SATA support in the Xeon XServe. I don't know if
there's a SAS/SATA RAID 5 card on the market
(remembering that the G5 card was a rebadged LSI
card), or how you'd prevent people mixing SAS and
SATA drives on the same card (which is going to be a
really bad idea).
http://www.attotech.com/expressSASr348.html
The problem is hooking in to the ADM data - no cable/jumper connector to take over the motherboard controller's data stream to/from the ADMs.
Russ
Xserve G5 2.0 GHz 2 GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.8) Apple Hardware RAID, ATTO UL4D, Exabyte VXA-2 1x10 1u

Intel Xserve With Raid card Remote install Question

I am currently trying to remotely install OSX server on an Intel 2008 Xserve with a newly fitted raid card (Apple) I get as far as choosing which HD to install but none of the drives show? (there are all Apple brand 300GB SAS)
Can I only install it locally on the machine if a Raid card/SAS drives are in there??
Thanks

Hi,
I just started to do the same. Did you find a solution?
Thanks,
Hans

Upgrading from Tiger Intel Mac XServe to Leopard

Hi,
I would like to find out whether if i have existing shared folders and users, when upgrading from Tiger to Leopard Intel Mac XServe, will there be any problem? Do i need to backup any database or files? I would appreciate if anyone could help me.
Thank you!
Cheers,
Stephanie

Server forum is here:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=96
Would you ever upgrade or install patches even, and not first make a backup?
How do you plan to do the upgrade? over top of Tiger, without backup first?

Need software for Intel ESB2 SATA RAID Controller for Windows 2012rR

I have installed Windows 2012r2 on my HP XW8600 and I found the software for the LSI Adapter (SAS 3000 series) but I am unable to find the software for management of the Intel ESB2 SATA RAID controller. The only software I could find was listed as a Windows 7 application but will not install onto my Windows 2012r2. Thank You

That looks exactly like the software I tried and an error reported this software will not install on this platform. I will try again tonite and see what happens. I will test all the apps on that list starting with the latest and see what happens. I thank you for your help.

Xserve 2006 RAID Controller

Hi Everyone,
I have an Intel Xserve 2006. Recently the RAID controller card failed so I popped back in the regular SATA controller (that it originally came with) and ordered a new RAID controller.
I am pretty sure I have the correct one for the 2006 model but it does not seem to work. I have no battery on it (thought one would come with it) the original expanded and I am pretty sure broke the other RAID controller.
Any ideas why this new one is not working also? Is it the battery?
Many thanks for any suggestions.
David Lee

Hi David,
Have you got the new RAID card in there now or the SATA backplane? I'm in London as well so will try and help you out as much as I can if you need it.
Contact details on my profile.
Thanks
Beatle

4 xserves + xserve raid setup?

Hello,
I have ben using xserves independently (no raid storage) for many years now.
Now, I would like to hook all my xserves (G4, G5, intel) to a xserve RAID and have the xserves all share the storage on the raid.
I know this is a broad question, but what do I need to set this up?
These servers are primarily web servers, so no user files are involved.
TIA for any tips/pointers given
P.S. Should I wait on the new RAID (rumored to have switch and sata drives)?
MaBook Pro 2.4 GHZ | 4GB RAM, 7200 HD Mac OS X (10.4.10)

First you have to look at the volumes. Are you planning/hoping to have all servers directly access the same files? If that's the case you're going to need some kind of SAN solution such as Apple's XSAN ($1000 per node, plus a dedicated controller server)
Then, in order to physically connect multiple servers to a RAID you will need a fiber channel switch. This will let the four servers connect to the two ports on the RAID.
All in all, you're probably looking at a $10K solution.
The alternatives are to:
a) divide the RAID into four separate slices and give each node its own slice of the array. This still requires a fiber channel switch, but doesn't need XSAN (you then have to work out synchronization between the different servers), or
b) Turn one of the servers into a NAS server (using either AFP or NFS) and have the other servers mount the XServe RAID over the network.
This solves the synchronization issue (there's one copy of the data that everyone sees), but isn't as fast as a fiber channel-based solution (everything has to go through that one server). It is, however, free.

Switching to Xserver/Xserve RAID

Hi boys and girls...
I was looking for a little assistance in switching over to Xserve. Let me give you some background info first.
Were a small studio in London, with only 11 people in-house and the majority working externally whether free-lance, from home or from another country etc. Were mostly Mac based, though 4 machines are those little beige pc things all running XP 2002. At the minute its 1 G5 and a collection of G4 tower's and G4 power book's, G4 cube's and so on. Were all connected to a G4 server running Mac OS X Server 10.2.8 with a very small dual 120GB HD raid thing running Retrospect.
Our problem is, this system was set up some time ago and were starting to outgrow it.
What were looking for is a way to backup all of our current work and archive all of our old work. Most users like to work directly off the server as theres so much file sharing between the macs and pc's, directly updating files so there isnt any duplication etc.
First question, is it possible (and a good/bad idea ?) to have 10-15 users working directly from a Mac server, that stores the archived work for users to reference and also current work which is backed up to tape and duplicated (as we currently have) to another HD?
Secondly, Is the ideal way to be running things? Is there a more efficent way?
Finally, what kind of spec should we be looking at? There's such a huge difference between servers, while were willing to invest, we dont want to go crazy (maybe a little) on costs.
I look forward to your responses and thank you in advance
Marcus

There are certainly some drawbacks with your current setup that mean you should make some changes.
In general, there's nothing wrong with working with files directly off the server, however, 10.2.8 has some issues with multiple users accessing the same files at the same time, so you should look to move to 10.4 ASAP to address that issue, regardless of any other changes you make.
I am assuming that the remote users don't work this way - uploading/download files as appropriate - it would be painful to work off the server remotely.
The only real disadvantage with working with files directly off the server is that if a file is changed erroneously and saved, there's no easy backup.
If the file was copied to the local drive and saved, it's easy to roll back to the previous version by re-copying it from the server, but if that change is saved directly to the server the only rollback involves pulling out Retrospect.
The other change that would make a difference is installing a gigabit switch and connecting the server to it. Even if all the host systems don't have gigabit ethernet, the extra bandwidth to the server will definitely help.
As for a new server, 10-15 file sharing users are not likely to stress the server, do you don't need a top-of-the-line configuration.
You should first decide how much disk space you need. With 500GB drives, the XServe can handle up to 1.5TB on its own, without any additional XServe RAID. However, you might want to consider RAID (using RAID you're limited to 1TB of RAID 5 storage, or 500GB of mirrored storage in the box).
In addition to your current data usage, consider using an online disk backup where multiple copies of the data is stored on the server itself before (or in addition to) backing up to tape.
While tapes offer several long-term archive advantages, they really don't work so well for quick restores of a file or two. Having a snapshot of the last couple of days data online makes it trivial to step back a day or so without having to resort to tapes. This may mean, though, that your 100GB of data requires 200 or 300GB of disk space.
If you do decide than an XServe RAID is the right solution, consider getting it right-sized from the get-go rather than buying it small (e.g. 4 drives) and adding later. While it can be done, adding drives to an existing array is a PITA.
If you do opt for an XServe RAID, and you don't currently have any rack-mounted equipment, consider using a PowerMac G5 as your server rather than an XServe. While similar in terms of performance, the PowerMac can work out cheaper depending on configuration.

Best option for initial setup of HD's on Xserve (possible RAID)

I'm just about to set up a new network in a new office and have an Xserve with 3 HD's 2x700GB and 1x500GB drive.
Now i have a fair bit of experience with the server itself, however i have zero experience with RAID.
I would like to start automatic backups of the OS (which i do already in a round about way). And have several share points for users network homes and data.
Does anyone have any suggestions of how to setup the HD's themselves, should i RAID? what would be the best option? etc etc etc.
All suggestions are very welcome and appreciated.
Thanks
Steven

No one can answer your question - at least not without more information.
When deciding disk layout you need to factor things like how much usable disk space you need - in this case for users' data. Are the users home directories on the server, or do they just upload files to the server for storage/backup?
What's the intensity of the data? Is reliability or performance more important? Would you pull your hair out if you lost a single file? a day's work? a week's work?
How much downtime could you tolerate if the server crashed?
These questions (and probably more) are important because it helps focus on the needs. For example, if the integrity of the data is more important than uptime you could mirror the two 700 GB drives for the user data and install the OS on the single 1TB drive. Of course this leaves you (slightly) vulnerable to a problem on the OS disk and you could be offline for hours if that disk failed. However, your user data would be mirrored and likely protected from disk failure.
On the other hand, if the uptime of the server is more important, you might opt to install the OS on the 700GB mirror, using the 1TB for user data, relying on backups to restore this disk if it fails.
Or, you might decide to put everything (OS and data) on the 700GB mirror, using the 1TB as the backup destination.
On the other hand you might determine that you need 1TB of user storage space, in which case you either need to use the 1TB for user data, or you need to stripe the two 700GB drives into a 1.4TB array, but then that array has no redundancy and the loss of a single disk will result in the loss of all data.
So, as I said, there is no one single answer to your question. You'll need to balance storage capacity and redundancy to find the best match for you.

Xserve / internal RAID card / Battery Failed (code 0x#0 = 18)

Hi, RAID utility is reporting a battery problem. I have rebooted xserve once, the problem went away, the battery was charged but now I have the problem again.
The result is a disabled write cache, which reduces performance.
Changing the battery is quite a big effort, so I really would like to avoid this. Any ideas, what the problem might be and how to solve it?

Hi Lordlobby,
I've had this on 2, 2008 xserves. Started off randomly happening that the RAID card would report the same error code which wasn't down to the discharge cycle. It became worse so the battery was replaced and it's been fine since... It's about 15mins work to replace the battery..
Good luck
Beatle

G5 Xserve Harware RAID controller - do all drives have to be connected?

Hi,
I am installing a hardware RAID controller into a G5 Xserve. The machine has three drives in it - one 80 GB drive module that has just the operating system installed on it, and two 500 GB drive modules that are currently configured as a RAID 1 array via software. I am aware that I have to reformat the drives after installing the RAID controller, and I have taken appropriate steps for backing the data up. My question, however, is if I will have to attach all three drives to the RAID controller, or whether I can leave the 80 GB module separate (the preferred configuration). Thanks.

Watch out for the firmware bug on the Apple Hardware RAID - doesn't always fully flush write caches on graceful power down (disconnects from the drives before the caches are fully flushed). I turned in a RADAR bug report in November 2005 (RADAR # 4350243), still open. It was a very difficult bug to pin down and create a reproducible test case - causes mystery garbage blocks from space, especially hard to get reproducible results because of the way RAID 5 works on reads. LSI Logic fixed this bug after Apple's code split from the LSI firmware code (the Apple Hardware RAID card is a rebranded LSI Logic megaraid card with Apple firmware), but it seems unlikely that Apple will ever fix this bug because the Xserve G5 and Apple Hardware RAID card are both EOL.
Only known workaround of which I am aware is to disable write cache on all LUNs.
Russ
Xserve G5 2.0 GHz 2 GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.8) Apple Hardware RAID, ATTO UL4D, Exabyte VXA-2 1x10 1u

XServe 2006 RAID Card Issues

Basically, I was gifted (some gift!) a Late 2006 XServe 2.0GHz Dual QX, with 4 GB RAM, and basically was told 'It does not boot. We give up.'
So heres what I have found so far..
It has an Apple Raid Card (don't ask me much more than that, or ill have to tear it apart again). But the 10.4.10 Install disk doesnt show the Raid card or drives (SATA Apple Drive Module 80.0). So is my card toast? Not supported by 10.4? Need a direction to run at because this thing is starting really get under my skin.
If I use a SATA Drive bay via USB (WD 80GB Drive), the disk appears, but the Server won't last long before it Kernel Panics, but it works during Installation Media Verification..
In the meantime, Ill tear apart the server again (Only a few minutes) and get the Raid Card ID.

An easy way to see if it's a raid card is on the part of the RAID/Backplane you can see when you slide the top cover off, if it has 2 chips with silver heatsinks on it's a RAID card if it's 1 chip it's a backplane. The RAID Card also has a small connection for a RAID battery..
as for why it doesn't work.. Have a look at the following
1) Do the drives light up when you start the machine.. You should see a green light (always on) and a blue activity light which should flash.
2) If it doesn't then there is an orange ribbon cable that goes from the RAID/Backplane to the logic board. Make sure this is properly connected and doesn't have any breaks in it.
The RAID card will work in a non raid configuration so you don't need to get rid of it if you don't want to. An easy option to check the server would be to install 10.6 or Lion on a USB stick and start the server up for it by plugging it in and holding down the ALT key when you power on the server. From the system profiler you should be able to see if it recognises the RAID card (Hardware RAID) and also if it passes it's diagnostics test.
There are of course a lot of things that could be wrong with it.. You can remove the RAID/Backplane board and start the server up from USB/Firewire to narrow down your testing.. One thing the 2006/2008 servers are pretty cheap on eBay in working form so you might find it better to get one from there. The 2009's hold their value a lot more as you can still install the current OS on them..
Hope that helps
Beatle

New Xserve & Old RAID

Hello Everyone,
We just bought a new Xserve to use with our existing Xserve RAID.
The new Xserve will replace our existing G4 Xserve which is running 10.3.5. We use our current Xserve for Windows & NFS file sharing.
My question: Can I just plug in the existing Xserve RAID into the new Xserve and will it just automatically mount? I understand I will need to recreate the shares and transfer accounts, etc. I just don't want the Xserve RAID to get wiped out by plugging it into a different Xserve.
Any advice or tips is appreciated. Thanks!

Yes, you can just plug it in -- assuming you used the default OS X file system of HFS+.

XServe Degraded RAID Array

Hello
I have 2 XServe Dual Core servers experincing the same issue.
On initial setup I used 2-500gb modules to create a mirrored drive. Then installed the OS plus the applications that I am running. After a day or so the RAIDS were degraded. I formatted the the degraded drive and the rebuilt the mirror. Upon restart the raid was degraded again. I replaced the drive and the same issue again. I originally thought it was bad hardware on one machine but I am experiencing the same issue on both. Have not only reformatted but have replaced with 3 different drives on BOTH XServes. I even tried removing the Apple drives and replacing them with Seagate 500gb SATA drives off the shelf here without any luck.
Any ideas???
Thanks in advance

Thanks for the Welcome.
I haven't tried the anything with RAM but I will..
The odd part is that it is happening on 2 different machines. I initially created the RAID. Then installed the OS. Then installed my server apps. Everything seemed fine for a few days and then a degraded drive. After a few rebuilds and recreating the RAID. I formated the drives and used the Zero all data option. Rebooted the server and didn't launch any applications just let the serevr run and after one day the raid was degraded. I lso get a degraded RAID if I shut down the server and power it back up.
What I will do today is try installing just the factory RAM in both servers. Format the drives and recreate the RAIDS and see what happens.
I installed 16gb of crucial RAM into one server. And 4gb of Crucial RAM into the other.
I will let you know

XServe G5 RAID Problem

I have an XServe G5 that has the three slots on the front for the hard drives. It has 2- 80GB hard drives installed. I booted it up off of the install CD and ran a megaraid -destroyconfig and then a megaraid -create R1 -Drive 0 1
It created the RAID fine and then I copied the OS back onto it which boots up and runs fine. The status of the drives through the megaraid are Good and the RAID status is optimal. My problem is when I go into the Server Monitor application under the hard drive it shows one hard drive (drive 1) and says it is a Megaraid but under the Pre-Failure Warning it says not available and there is no green light lit up for the hard drive icon. I am running OS X Server 10.3.9

This is normal.
Since you're running a hardware RAID card, the system can't actually see the physical drives at all.
All it sees is the RAID volumes presented by the RAID card - it doesn't know whether there's one, two or ten drives behind that, or whether they're mirrored, striped, parity, etc., etc.
Therefore it cannot collect the SMART data (the basis of the pre-failure warnings) and it doesn't know if the physical drives are OK or not (the hardware RAID card masks all that data from the OS).
As a result you need to use the megaraid utility to manage the physical drives' status.

Intel Xserve + Xserve RAID + SCSI

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