Solaris 10 X86 - Hardware RAID - SMC/SVM question...

I have gotten back into Sun Solaris System Administration after a five year hiatus... My skills are a little rusty and some of the tools have changed, so here is are my questions...
I have installed Solaris 10 release 1/06 on a Dell 1850 with an attached PowrVault 220v connected to a Perc 4 Di controller. The RAID is configured via BIOS interface to my liking, Solaris is installed and see's all my partitions which I created during install.
For testing purposes, the servers internal disk is used for the OS, the PowerVault is split into 2 RAID's - one is a mirror, one is a stripe...
The question is; do I manage the RAID using Sun Management Console and the tools OR do I use SMC?
When I launch SMC and go into Enhanced Storage... I do not see any RAID's... If I select "Disks" I do see them, but when I select them, it wants to run "FDISK" on them... now this is OK since they are blank but I want to ensure I am not doing sometinhg I should not be concerned with...
If the PERC controller is controlling the RAID, what do I need SMC for?

You can use SMC for other purposes but it won't help your with RAID.
Sol 10 1/06 has raidctl which handles LSI1030 and LSI1064 RAID�enabled controllers (from raidctl(1M)).
Some of the PERCs (most?) are LSI but I don't know if they are chipsets used by your PoweEdge (I doubt it).
Generally you can break it down like this for x86:
If you are using hardware RAID with Solaris 10 x86 you have to use pre-Solaris (i.e. on the RAID controller) managment or hope that the manufacturer of the device has a Solaris managment agent/interface (good luck).
The only exception to this that I know of is the RAID that comes with V20z, V40z, X4100, X4200.
Otherwise you will want to go with SVM or VxVM and manage RAID within Solaris (software RAID).
SMC etc are only going to show you stuff if SVM is involved and VxVM has its own interface, otherwise the disks are controlled by PERC and just hanging out as far as Solaris is concerned.
Hope this helps.

Similar Messages

T2000 -Solaris 10 - Hardware Raid - Hot Spare

Hi,
i am setting up a t2000 server with Solaris 10. I have booted to single user mode through the network and am setting up the mirroring. (ie #raidctl -c c0t0d0 c0t1d0).
This has worked fine.
How does one go about setting up a disk to be a hot spare to this mirror. I found some docs on running raidctl -a set -g c0t3d0 c0t0d0 but the -a option no longer seems to be valid????
Is it possible to set up a hot spare like this?
Thanks,
Darren

The hardware raid supports either mirrors or stripes. I don't believe hot spare is an option. Typically you would use a hot spare for a raid 5 configuration. Check out this doc page for more info:
http://docs.sun.com/source/819-7990-10/ontario-volume_man.html#pgfId-1000514

Solaris 10 x86 - software RAID

I try make software RAID on x86 server with Solaris 10.
2 ata/ide disks on Intel i865 board.
I make mirroring all data partitions - it normally working.
make 2-nd disk bootable.
What I can do with BOOT partition ? mirror ? format on pcfs and copy data from 1-st disk? copy it with dd ?

You can use SMC for other purposes but it won't help your with RAID.
Sol 10 1/06 has raidctl which handles LSI1030 and LSI1064 RAID�enabled controllers (from raidctl(1M)).
Some of the PERCs (most?) are LSI but I don't know if they are chipsets used by your PoweEdge (I doubt it).
Generally you can break it down like this for x86:
If you are using hardware RAID with Solaris 10 x86 you have to use pre-Solaris (i.e. on the RAID controller) managment or hope that the manufacturer of the device has a Solaris managment agent/interface (good luck).
The only exception to this that I know of is the RAID that comes with V20z, V40z, X4100, X4200.
Otherwise you will want to go with SVM or VxVM and manage RAID within Solaris (software RAID).
SMC etc are only going to show you stuff if SVM is involved and VxVM has its own interface, otherwise the disks are controlled by PERC and just hanging out as far as Solaris is concerned.
Hope this helps.

Solaris Volume Manager or Hardware RAID?

Hi - before I build some new Solaris servers I'd like thoughts on the following please. I've previously built our Sun servers using SVM to mirror disks and one of the reasons is when I O/S patch the server I always split the mirrors beforehand and in the event of a failure I can just boot from the untouched mirror - this method has saved my bacon on numerous occasions. However we have just got some T4-1 servers that have hardware RAID and although I like this as it moves away from SVM / software RAID and to hardware RAID I'm now thinking that I will no longer have this "backout plan" in the event of issues with the O/S updates or otherwise however unlikely.
Can anyone please tell me if I have any other options?
Thanks - Julian.

Thanks - just going through the 300 page ZFS admin guide now. I want to ditch SVM as it's clunky and not very friendly whenever we have a disk failure or need to O/S patch as mentioned. One thing I have just read from the ZFS admin guide is that:
"As described in “ZFS Pooled Storage” on page 51, ZFS eliminates the need for a separate volume
manager. ZFS operates on raw devices, so it is possible to create a storage pool comprised of
logical volumes, either software or hardware. This configuration is not recommended, as ZFS
works best when it uses raw physical devices. Using logical volumes might sacrifice
performance, reliability, or both, and should be avoided."
So looks like I need to destroy my hardware RAID as well and just let ZFS manage it all. I'll try that, amend my JET template and kick of an install and see what it looks like.
Thanks again - Julian.

Dell Hardware on Linux or Solaris x86

Hi,
My company is considering moving to dell hardware in a move to drive TCO down. We currently run Sun sparc (240, 490,890) servers and they are nearing end of life. Doing the research, even visited some vendors and from what we've seen, running either RH 5 or even Solaris (x86) on Dell could prove to be a good move. We're running mostly 10.2 databases with a couple of 9.2 that we hope to have upgraded by year end.
Has anyone made a similar move and what is your experience? I worked on Dell about 4 years ago and back then we felt there were reliability issues. They crashed a little too often for my liking. I realize some of it was do to OS panics and not just hardware but that is part of the package.
Any feedbackup would be greatly appreciated.

If you're going to go Dell, you might aswell go the whole way and run RedHat.
Aside from the support issues mentioned (I'm not familiar with that aspect) Solaris has a history of being much more expensive to run (largely due to the cost of the employees that know it) with the major advantage being: better integration with Sun hardware.
As for Dell reliability, there's a reason we're an HP shop..

ZFS Configuration Question - Also posted in Solaris x86

Hello,
I have 2 x 140GB (hw Raid-0 + spare). About 20GB is allocated to Solaris on UFS (standard installation and partitions/slices).
I would like to allocate the 120GB left on the disk drive to ZFS. That space is not unallocated to any file system for now.
I found a lot of documentation of how to create a ZFS Pool on an empty disk drive. The documentation is less clear on how to do it on a drive already use by another FS.
Any help will be appreciated.
Michel

Darren,
I just setup another Solaris x86 server tonight to play with. That future production server is in it's own vlan wtih no Internet access for now.
The test server has the same configuration, but less disk space.
Here is the output of prtvtoc
# prtvtoc /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0
* /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 partition map
* Dimensions:
* 512 bytes/sector
* 63 sectors/track
* 255 tracks/cylinder
* 16065 sectors/cylinder
* 2350 cylinders
* 2348 accessible cylinders
* Flags:
* 1: unmountable
* 10: read-only
* First Sector Last
* Partition Tag Flags Sector Count Sector Mount Directory
0 2 00 10522575 27198045 37720619 /
1 3 01 16065 8401995 8418059
2 5 00 0 37720620 37720619
7 8 00 8418060 2104515 10522574 /export/home
8 1 01 0 16065 16064
Output of format
selecting c0t0d0
[disk formatted]
Warning: Current Disk has mounted partitions.
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 is currently mounted on /. Please see umount(1M).
Total disk size is 8920 cylinders
Cylinder size is 16065 (512 byte) blocks
Cylinders
Partition Status Type Start End Length %
====== ====== ============ ===== === ====== ===
1 Active Solaris2 1 2350 2350 26
As you can see, the 1st partition is used at 26%. With fdisk, I can create a 2nd partition. My problem is to get that 2nd partiition availlable to Solaris and create a zpool in that unused space..
Michel

Stupid question - What platforms does Solaris x86 run on?

Hello,
I am a longtime Solaris for sparc user. Could someone please direct me to information about what platforms/processors Solaris for x86 runs on? Are there dual-bootable Windows/Solaris systems or something? What about laptops? I will start searching myself for info, but if anyone knows of a great strehouse of info on this matter, I would appreciate it.
Thanks!

solaris: get it free
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp
What platforms does Solaris x86 run on? not such a stupid question if one is to inquire, does it run on intel conroe chips, yonah? are both chips recognized, does it run at 64 bit on conroe? has anyone got it going on mac? how about the 4 proc intel chips released. any one tried this and last but not least xen virtualistion with new built in amd/intel virtualization technology...

K8N Neo2-F Hardware RAID question

Hi guys,
Question for you. I have a Hitrachi 160GB SATA drive and I installed x64. After all is good and well I went out and got a second identical drive. I would now like to have these two drives Raided with the hardware raid. When I go into the RAID setup after POST, I can see both, add both, and mirror both. When I reboot, all I get is a post and it just stops after showing that box where it lists everything in the computer and what has what IRQ's. No error messages saying no boot drive, no system disk, etc. I switch it back and I can boot with the one drive. I also noticed during the RAID config, it asks me if I want to erase the drive. I always say no because I'm scared that it will erase the primary drive that I need to keep and not the new one for mirroring. Can anyone help me or confirm I'm doing this right. Thank you very much in advance.
Matt
-MSI K8N Neo2-F Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce3 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard
-AMD 64 4200+ and fan/heatsink that came with it - NO OVERCLOCK (YET)
-2 - HITACHI Deskstar 7K250 HDS722516VLSA80 -13G0254 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard Drive
-CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit System Memory
-ASPIRE ATX-AS520W BLACK ATX 520W Power Supply 115/230 V CB IEC 950/ TUV EN 60950/ UL 1950/ CSA 950
-Windows XP x64 SP1
-BFG GeForce 6800 GT AGP

You windows installation don't have the nvraid drivers loaded sou you won't be able to boot that windows installation
with the xp64 disk put in a enabled raid array .
But perhaps you can fool the system by doing this .
Leave the xp64 HD as is (just as a regular sata say at sata 1 )
Connect the new disk to the other sata controller , say sata 3 ( as they are controlled in pairs )
Set sata 3 as raid enabled and create a raid-1 array in the nvidia raidbios with just this single drive in it .
Boot windows xp64 from the normal enabled xp-HD and it should detect new hardware is added and ask for drivers .
Install the nvidia raid drivers and reboot when asked .
Then check if you have raid manager and raid drivers enabled in the windows installation .
After this point you can proceed to do the thing you first tried .(but without clearing the disk)
Delete the workaround fake raid you made with the new disk .
Shut down and move the hd-connectors again so that you have the two drives either at sata 1+2 or sata 3+4 .
Make a new array that includes the xp installation with only this disk in it , leave the other one free .
Try to boot the system .
If it boots you use nvraid manager in windows to add the second drive and let the array rebuild (sync drives )
Note that rebuilding take several hours to complete .
Look in the nvraid user guide for details .
To fully understand the nvidia raid it's wise to read this from start to finish a couple of times ,
and to have a hardcopy of it printed out.
A copy of the nvraid userguide rev.20 here :
ftp://ftp.tyan.com/manuals/m_NVRAID_Users_Guide_v20.pdf

Question about wide-screen monitor on Solaris x86

I have Solaris x86, version 10/2009 installed.
It works fine with any wide-screen monitor I plug in.
But when I use this 3rd party CAD/CAM software, any round
circle is being displayed as an oval shape. I believe that's because
on the wide-screen monitor, the width of the monitor is longer than the height.
Does anyone know if there's a setting to change so that I can view circles as true round circles instead of an oval shape? Thanks.

OK, I know what the problem is now.
But I need to change the resolution settings. Does anyone know how to change it on x86, version 10/2009?
I recall it being something like "kdmconfig"

Solaris possibly preventing RAID BIOS launch

Hello
I have installed a STLab A-230 2-Channel Serial ATA & ATA-133 RAID Combo and tried to boot into its RAID BIOS with no luck. The initial loading menu quickly switches to the multi-boot menu where you select to boot into Solaris or another OS. I am supposed to press Ctrl-Z, but it just switches to the boot menu without bringing up RAID BIOS. Please let me know if this would be to do with the installed Solaris and its uninstallation would solve it.
Regards,
Dai

You can use SMC for other purposes but it won't help your with RAID.
Sol 10 1/06 has raidctl which handles LSI1030 and LSI1064 RAID�enabled controllers (from raidctl(1M)).
Some of the PERCs (most?) are LSI but I don't know if they are chipsets used by your PoweEdge (I doubt it).
Generally you can break it down like this for x86:
If you are using hardware RAID with Solaris 10 x86 you have to use pre-Solaris (i.e. on the RAID controller) managment or hope that the manufacturer of the device has a Solaris managment agent/interface (good luck).
The only exception to this that I know of is the RAID that comes with V20z, V40z, X4100, X4200.
Otherwise you will want to go with SVM or VxVM and manage RAID within Solaris (software RAID).
SMC etc are only going to show you stuff if SVM is involved and VxVM has its own interface, otherwise the disks are controlled by PERC and just hanging out as far as Solaris is concerned.
Hope this helps.

X2100 hardware RAID support

Got a new X2100 server with two SATA disks.
I upgraded the BIOS using the Supplemental 1.1 disk. The BIOS revision reported is now 1.0.3.
Have defined a hardware RAID mirror of two SATA disks using the BIOS utility. Looks Ok and is reported as "Healty Mirror" when the machine is turned on.
If I boot Fedora Core 4 (which is not officially supported by Sun) I see two disks instead of one as expected.
If I boot Solaris 10 1/96 (which IS supported) then no disks are found!
So my question is: Does anyone know if the HW RAID system on the X2100 is supported at all? And if it is, how?

Have you looked the procedure in this manual?
http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/html/8 19-3720-11/Chap2.html
Also there seems to be a lack of drivers available with some operating systems ( W2003 ) on the X2100, this could be the case with FC4 ( although I use FC4 on a notebook and it seems very close to RHEL 4, but without RHEL graphics, clustering and other tools ). In the InfoDoc section of the spectrum handbook for the X2100, there is a document that discusses configuring SVM on x64 systems, at the begining the author recommends using the hardware RAID utility, this may suggest that it is supported. You should take a look through the system documentation to see if you have missed something, I'd be interested to know if you set the BIOS up for the various OS types!

Solaris x86 or Solaris 8

What is the latest version of solaris on intel called? Is it generic
across intel boards? Are there some pitfalls to look out for (i.e.
only runs on 400 MHz or less, only a handfull of graphic cards, etc.)
What is the best C/C++ compiler? Does it support Visual Workshop?
How about Motif? What version? We were using Motif 1.2.4 on X11R5
from ICS, is this OK? Any heads up would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

Solaris 8 is currently available at
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/binaries/index.html
Not sure what you mean by "generic across intel boards" - it's the
same kernel, but drivers will differ depending on your H/W config -
see the HArdware Compatibility list:
http://soldc.sun.com/support/drivers/hcl/index.html
There are freeware e.g. GNU compilers - go to sunfreeware.com
For serious commercial development, the Sun Workshop tools are
available - Workshop 5 is shipping now and you can get a WS6 early access at the access1.sun.com website.
CDE seems to have taken over from Motif. For details on X11R6 features etc, follow the first link below:
- www.sun.com/solaris
- www.sun.com/intel (For Solaris on the Intel Platform)
- www.sunfreeware.com (take a look at the "Other Useful Sites")
- www.egroups.com (do a search on Solaris, many questions already answered)
- Newsgroups (alt.solaris.x86, comp.unix.solaris)
- www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=solarisunix;list
- www.SolarisCentral.org
- metalab.unc.edu/pub/packages/solaris/i86pc/
- http://solarisguide.com
- dan.carlsbad.ca.us/faqs/s86faq.html
- solarisguide.com
- http://fishbutt.fiver.net
- http://www.sunhelp.org/

Affordable x86 Hardware

I'm getting pretty frustrated with trying to make Solaris 11 work on my x86 hardware. I've got an old gigabyte motherboard and a bunch of PCI SIL3114 cards that worked great on Solaris 10. Upgrading to Solaris 11 was pretty painful, though. I've come to the conclusion that something is wrong with one of my SIL3114 cards, but I can't replace it anymore. The closest thing I can get is a SIL3124 but Solaris won't even boot with that card in. The display gets corrupted on the boot screen and I never get to the login screen.
At this point, I think I need to start over. New motherboard, new PCIe -> SATA controllers, etc.
My question:
Does anybody know of a reasonably priced motherboard w/ PCIe as well as a (maybe not reasonably priced) PCIe -> SATA controller that works with Solaris 11 without spending weeks trying to make it work? I started looking through the hardware compatability list for things that are "reported to work" but all of the motherboards I found were either discontinued or 300+ dollars. That's a little ridiculous for what is basically a glorified file server. Frankly, if it's going to cost me that much to get it working I'm going to give up on Solaris and buy a Drobo or try to find an operating system that doesn't cause me to rip my hair out.
Thanks for your help,
Pete

Hi
Solaris 11 supports Xfree86 so you can find a plenty of Graphics drivers or you can get a generic xfree86 driver that will work for sure .
http://www.xfree86.org/
Regards
Sadiq

Using a Mac Pro w / Apple Internal Hardware RAID Card?

Anyone using a Mac Pro with a Apple Hardware RAID Card 2010?
( I have a 12 Core )
Is it worth the $600-700 ?
How much faster than the software RAID 0?
I see Hamm's RAID tips chart .. but it doesn't include such options .. plus it is based on a PC system.
Any tips would be great ..
I find many areas where the application is slow / unresponsive .. and I'm not sure where the bottleneck is ... Maybe the hardware RAID will solve it?
I'm really am impressed with CS5 .. it would be even better with some adjustments .. but I am absolutely disappointed with sluggish performance on my top-of-the-line Mac Pro 12 Core.
This is not what I expected for a $8,000 machine.
Some users says that the port of CS5 for the Mac has taken a back seat to the Windows version at Adobe.
I can't imagine that Adobe would not put 100% effort into Mac products.
Go Team!!!

I have a 2009 Mac Pro 3.33GHz Quad core w/ Apple RAID card, 16GB RAM from OWC, and Apple's Radeon HD 5870 GPU.
I have RAID 0 set across 3x1TB drives internally, and the standard 640GB drive for OSX and all program files. I set all video assets, renders, previews and such on the 3TB RAID.
This seems to work wonderfully. I built this system specifically to edit a feature film shot on P2 DVCProHD, and I've been impressed with how it handles it. This was all built prior to CS5, which took me by surprise. Had I known nVidia would become such a problem for Apple, I would have built a PC, but that's another story.
I just started a new project in CS5 on the same system, this time using H.264 video from my Nikon D7000, and so far, it seems to play just as nicely, despite not having hardware acceleration via CUDA technology. Yellow bars on top, even. I haven't had any problems with clips taking a long time to populate on the timeline or any of that, so perhaps the RAID card helps there.
All this aside, I've already decided to upgrade my RAID for another reason. Right now, my backup is performed via an eSATA-connected external drive through a PCI eSATA card. After every edit session, I dump everything on the RAID onto the external drive, and it goes much faster than the old FW800 transfer used to. I'm about to replace my Apple RAID card with an Areca card and set up a 4-bay RAID 3 via an SAS connection. This will allow for excellent data throughput while offering more security than my current RAID 0 / manual backup system, and free up the internal drives for backups, exports and render files.
I believe in hardware RAID, but I'm not as knowledgeable as Harm and others are about it. I had my Mac built to order with the Apple RAID card, so I have no experience using Premiere with a software RAID. Due to my smooth experience using it, I think it was worth it, but plenty of people say the Apple RAID card is rubbish, and to go with Areca or Atto cards. I didn't know about them until after I built my system, and even though it will cost a couple thousand to upgrade my RAID from this point, I expect to have an even better system than I already have.
I hope this helps, and feel free to ask any questions I didn't address.

My hardware RAID 1 only showing up in disk utility and not finder.

Last week I finally was able to take my early 2011 iMac in to have my Seagate 1TB hard drive replaced for the recall.
Late 2010 model iMac
OS X 10.6.8
OWC Mercury Elite Pro 4TB x 4TB Hardware RAID
When I took it in the RAID 1 was working just fine. When I finally got the iMac back and booted everything up the RAID 1 was getting the dialog box that read "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer."
I have tried going into disk utility to see if I can verify the disk and then saw it is coming up as two different volumes... Along with those two different volumes, I can not go to click verify as it is greyed out.
I contacted OWC and they said they have never heard of this and had two solutions, to try a software like diskwarrior, or if that didnt work I can take the drives out and try another external dock to see if it is the RAID hardware.
If anyone has any ideas as to what could help with this situation that would be great as I was under the impression (and told by a number of other people) that having a RAID 1 as my backup was good and should not need anything else. I just want to be able to get all the data off then I will rebuild it or send it into OWC.
Thanks!!!!

So a fault in the Hardware Raid controller could make it not read properly? I am planning on having a good backup set up after this!
As for the screenshot, the original was not set up with the SoftRaid. When I got the computer back I installed that to see if that may pick it up and make it at least readable to save the data on it. The two in question are the highlighted 4TB drives, which befor also read as one drive as it was set up in the OWC enclosure as a hardware raid.

Solaris 10 X86 - Hardware RAID - SMC/SVM question...

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