Xserve with Xserve raid...

I have a Xserve G4 connected to a Xserve Raid. Up to 2 weeks ago, everything was running fine. On my 2.2 TB Xserve Raid I have 2 partitions. Both partitions have afp file sharing on them. For some reasons, partition 1 is running really slow. Users that are working off that partition are experiencing lots of lag. The 2nd partition seems fine. Locally on that machine, I copy files back and forth, and that seems fine aswell. Something on the networking side is bottle necking partition 1. Has anyone had a similar problem, or might see something that I am overseeing? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Kawal

How full is the partition?
My guess it it's full - more than 90%, at least.
All drives will slow as they fill up because the controller has to do a lot more work to find available space for new data. It's worse in a RAID setup since the available space is spread out across multiple drives.

Similar Messages

Intel xserve with hardware raid. Volume not mounting but drives show good

So this morning we came in and found that our intel xserve with the hardware raid is not booting.
Booted from OS X Install DVD and Raid Utility shows the Raidset good and all drives good.
Open disk utility and no volume form the raid will show up.
ANY IDEAS!??!

New information.
So out of the blue the Volume decided it needed to run an initializing run.
Apple care says I have to just wait until its done and see if the volume mounts.
Very strange since everything was green (good) until just then.
UPDATE:
Next day, the initializing has finished and now the Volume says (good) but the Raid Set is now "in transition". Applecare says I have to just wait till its done and see if the volume mounts.

XServe with hardware RAID card and headless install

Today, while trying to remotely install Mac OS X Server 10.4 ("Tiger") on an Apple XServe G5 with hardware RAID card, I discovered that it did not report the IP address of the server (booted from CD) with the sa_srchr command as it did with Mac OS X Server 10.3. With Mac OS X Server 10.3, I could boot the server from the CD, use the sa_srchr command from a remote machine to find the IP address, ssh into the server and user megaraid to create or recreate the RAID volumes using the internal drives in the server.
When I boot the XServe from the Mac OS Server 10.4 CD and run the sa_srchr command from a remote computer, I get "No Longer Used" in the place where the IP address should be (as it was in 10.3 Server and as it is described in the current, 10.4 Server, "Command Line Administration" manual).
Example: localhost#2xCPUFormat#No Longer Used #xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx#Mac OS X Server 10.4#RDY4PkgInstall#3.0#512
Just as an experiment, I threw the Mac OS X Server 10.4 DVD into an iMac G5 and booted it. Using the sa_srchr command, I get the same "No Longer Used" where the IP address should be.
Does anyone know:
Is this a problem with the original "Mac OS X Server 10.4.0" installation CDs? Do I need 10.4.1, 10.4.2 or 10.4.3 CD/DVD media?
Has this functionality been removed from Tiger install discs? Is there another way to create the RAID volumes?
I know that I can use the Mac OS X 10.3 Server disks to work around this, but it doesn't seem like I should have to...
Justin Sako
Leander ISD

Are you sure you have the 10.4 Admin Tools installed on the 'client' machine? I've seen this happen when trying to set up a 10.4 server from a machine with 10.3 Admin Tools installed. Try deleting the Admin Tools from your client machine, and re-install from a 10.4 DVD.
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

OS drive + RAID 1 with Apple RAID card

I have a G5 Xserve with the RAID card and three ADM drives. How do I set up Megaraid to have a single non-raid drive and a RAID 1 mirror? I installed the OS onto one of the drives after a "destroyconfig". When I create the RAID with drives 1 and 2, the drive 0 is lost. THe only way I found to make it work was with a soft RAID 1 in disk utility.

How do I set up Megaraid to have a single non-raid drive and a RAID 1 mirror?
I'd go with not connecting one of the drives to the RAID card.
When you installed the card you replaced three short SATA cables with three long ones - one per drive.
Just replace one of the long ones with one of the original short ones. This will reconnect one of the drives back to the motherboard, leaving two drives connected to the RAID card.
Kind of a hack, for sure, but in lieu of having a JBOD mode in megaraid it seems like the simplest solution.

Problems with Xserve RAID

I have been having problems with Xserve RAID, which happened in a close time span, but may not be related. The Xserve RAID is set up with 7 disks with RAID 5, totaling to 1.3TB in storage capacity.
First, the first disk failed and the RAID system was degraded. Since I got a very similar 250GB harddisk (but without "Apple Firmware") I tried putting it as a replacement. It was recognized but it became a hot spare disk, even though I did not set the system to use hot spare.
Later Mac OS X reported that the Xserve RAID's 1.3TB volume was unmounted. I check with Disk Utility, and it reported a lot of errors. I ended up with about 70GB of files in lost+found, and I confirmed that many files were missing. Disk Utility could not really fixed it.
I put back the failed disk, and Xserve RAID successfully rebuilt the array. I did "Background Array Conditioning" to perform surface scan and mapping of bad blocks. It completed without error. I then did "Verify Parity Data", and it completed but with error, as follows:
Event:
Disk 5 Reported An Error. COMMAND:0x37 ERROR:0x64 STATUS:0x81 LBA:0x119E6880
Description:
The drive reported ATA error. This is a failure in the communication from the RAID Controller to the drive.
Any idea what is happening with this Xserve RAID? Bad disk? Bad controller? Or what? Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Xserve RAID Dual G5 2.0GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9)

After reading here and there on the net (including this forum), yes I realized that the "Apple Firmware" thing may be significant after all. But since I set the Xserve RAID to use RAID 5, a failure of one disk should not affect data integrity. And surface scan was successful, implyingthat all disks are now free from defects. So why did it lost 70GB worth of data? I experienced disk hardware failure often with Windows system but never experienced losing data while the hardware seems to be fine. Without knowing why this happened, I feel scared to put data on Xserve RAID, and this is ironic since this 1.7TB Xserve RAID is meant for storing data safely...

XServe with 3 x 500Gb Drives - RAID 5 Possible ?

Hi Guys,
My supplier is telling me we can chuck 3 x 500Gb drives into a standard dual processor Xserve and then raid 5 them like we usually do on our larger raids with 6 or so disks.
I have a feeling this is not possible normally. On the website it says - "AppleRAID software RAID supports RAID 0 and 1 with online rebuilding; optional PCI hardware RAID controller"
I take it I will need the "optional PCI hardware RAID controller" ??? to acheive raid 5 ?
I'll do a bit more looking around and see if I can find the answer but if anyone knows...
Regards
Mitch

Not sure about the performance increase but I would say yes, as we'll be using a Hardware raid card to talk to the drives.
The Mirroring you've done is a software "raid". I have done it this way before with our other Xserves with 2 drives but seeing we have the opportunity to do it with the raid card I believe it's the way to go.
If we lose a drive the others take over seemlessly (Ihope!)
Others here who already have their Xsrvs doing this will post I hope to back me up or let us both know the correct answer. I am still waiting for the money to order mine !
Mitch

Xserve and xserve raid works with iOS 10.9

xserve and xserve raid works with iOS 10.9

For the Xserve hardware:
OS X Mavericks: System Requirements
The Xserve RAID is known as a DAS (directly attached storage) device and provided the HBA card you're planning to use is fully supported in whatever server platform you've chosen (Apple, Microsoft etc) it will be work regardless of OS version.

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

Trouble NetBooting Xserve G5 with PCI RAID Card

Has anyone else had problems NetBooting Xserve G5 with the PCI RAID card installed?
I've got a Dual 2.0 GHz and Dual 2.3 GHz Xserve G5 that both can't seem to NetBoot consistently. On the very odd occasion they do netboot but not very oftern. When you set the NetBoot volume from the Startup Disk system preference and reboot, they just fail to boot and eventually their fans go crazy.
I have other Xserve G5s that NetBoot just fine. I've tried different network cables and swapping switch ports with Xserves that work, but it hasn't helped.
Could it be something on the NetBoot server?
Looking at the system log on the NetBoot server you can see the "bootpd" request from the booting server. I don't have a graphics card install in the Xserves being NetBooted so don't know what's being displayed on the server's console.
The NetBoot server is an Intel-based Xserve (Late 2006) running 10.4.11.

that seems to be the next step here: find or purchase a new card to test the existing drives.
i had wondered if these cards aren't compatible with the 750 gb drives. does anyone know?
also, would a bad battery cause such craziness? does the battery keep read/write cache data on the 64mb on-card memory for just this purpose? i haven't found much documentation on the apple branded cards.
thanks for your help.

Xserve disks and RAID questions

I have an Intel Xserve with its two original 750 GB disks. These are configured as RAID 1 (mirror).
I intend to purchase an identical disk as a hot spare and upgrade two old G4s with four each of the same disks as reserve web servers/backup.
The original disks are Seagate ST3750640NS which I can buy for £140 although the Apple price is £386 including the disk carrier. Apple refuses to sell the disk carriers separately.
The PCI boards I have found are:
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata1v4.html
and
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/temposatax4i.html
costing $120 and $200 respectively.
There are PC boards as cheap as $20 but these may have bootability and compatibility issues. There appears to be little information about the proportion of hard/soft RAID resulting from any of these boards.
My questions are:
1 - Is there an inexpensive way of buying disk carriers for recent Xserves?
2 - Are there alternative satisfactory PCI boards?
3 - Do such boards differ much in terms of RAID types supported?
4 - Do such boards differ much in terms of the degree to which they are host computer independent? - ie more hard than soft and hence, presumably, faster.

>1 - Is there an inexpensive way of buying disk carriers for recent Xserves?
I'm not aware of any sources other than Apple (at least that I'd trust).
>2 - Are there alternative satisfactory PCI boards?
There are several manufacturers who make PCI RAID cards that you can use. You've listed two, but there are others including the RocketRAID series, and those from ACard.
>3 - Do such boards differ much in terms of RAID types supported?
In my opinion, you get what you pay for.
Cheap cards may support RAID 0 and 1, while more expensive cards may add RAID 5. This may or may not be important for you if you're just mirroring.
There are going to be performance differences between each card. Since you're using G4's, though, you're going to have other bottlenecks, so disk speed isn't likely to be a big factor.
>4 - Do such boards differ much in terms of the degree to which they are host computer independent? - ie more hard than soft and hence, presumably, faster.
If you get a card that works in a Mac, it's likely to also work in other hardware. The same can not necessarily be said the other way around - cheap PC-centric cards may not support Macs, mostly because of driver issues.
Note that you may also have issues with booting - not all cards can create bootable volumes which may leave you out in the cold if you don't check that first.

Is it possible to directly connect two Xserves with a Promise VTrak E610fD via Fibre?

I have two Xserves and I'd like to connect them with a Promise VTrak E610fD. As this storage has two controllers, I'd like to connect both Xserve with both controllers. Is this setup possible? Can I access (read and write) the same disk array with both Xserves simultaneously (Xsan?) or do I have to create two separate arrays?

Hello bleistift, and welcome to the AppleBoards,
Fibre channel is SCSI which means that any device connected by fibre assumes it is in sole control of that device. When you attach more than one machine via fibre both machines assume they are in control and unexpected behaviors and data corruption ensues. SAN (like Apple's XSAN) provides a layer of arbitration over the shares allowing multiple fibre connections to play nicely with one another while still being connected over fibre.
You could easily connect two machines to a single RAID box if they are accessing different RAID volumes at the same time, but once you start connecting to the same data at the same time you need SAN.
HTH,
=Tod

Connecting xserve to xserve raid - done everything

Hello,
I'm having trouble connecting my secondhand xserve to xserve raid.
- xserve is running 10.8.5
- i'm screen sharing the xserve
- I have reset both the RAID controllers with paperclip
- both fiber channels are connected
- both controller cards are connected to the xserve via ethernet
- half the hdds in both sides of raid show red light
- it has been on for 24 hours now
Add system in RAID Admin doesn't propose anything, so I have manually entered the ip addresses from server.app>network pane.
If anybody has any ideas I would be thankful.
Paul

There are several possibilities.
First off, from your screen shot, both your RAID and your host are using the same IP addresses (169.254.192.90 and 169.254.87.107). That's not going to work. However, it's probably not your major problem... let's move down the stack.
Your interface on the host isn't connected/configured corrected - as noted by the Orange ball alongside the IP address. You need to fix that.
Second, the 169.254 addresses are somewhat variable, so just because the RAID had that address at one point in time that doesn't mean it still has that address - it could have changed. This may or may not be the case, depending on the link status of the host system.
If you choose to Add System within RAID Admin, it will search over the network to find nearby, available RAID systems to add. This is usually better than relying on dynamic IP addresses that might have changed since you last configured the array.
In either caase, focus on the link to your host. Check if you can at least ping the RAID. Use a tool such as tcpdump to see if you can determine the IP address of the RAID (hint: you should see it broadcasting on the network link).

Seeking advice for backing up Xserve G5 w/ RAID PCI card

Hello all!
I'm a newbie to Macs and server admin, and I have inherited the job of setting up a server at work for file storage. I'll do my best to give a concise description of our set-up - I'm looking for some advice on the last few odds and ends... mainly how we can backup the system.
We bought an Xserve G5 with an option RAID PCI card. We have 3 500GB drives in the Xserve, configured to RAID 5 (giving us effectively 1TB of storage space). We will be using the server for data storage. About 20 computers will access the server over a network; we are using an assortment of Macs and PCS.
I am seeking advice on backup systems for the server. In the event that the RAID5 fails, we don't want to lose our data. We just need a snapshot of the server; we don't need to archive data or to take the HD offsite. Our old server just used Retrospect to run incremental backups every night (with a complete clean backup once a month). Our current thought is to attach large external hard drive to our admin computer (not the server directly) and run nightly backups as before.
The major points I have are:
-Any thoughts on reliable 1 TB external drives?
-Any recommendations on software that can backup from a RAID over a network? I found info for Retrospect Server 6.0 - it seems to do what we want, but is rather pricey.
Thanks in advance for any advice! I really appreciate it!
Xserve G5 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Greetings-
We all started out as newbies at one time or another-no worries. That is why we are here.
I personally use the Lacie branded drives. They are sturdy and reliable. My only thoughts here are to have at least three external drives-one for today's backup, one for a backup stored securely nearby, and one to be securely stored off-site. Rotate the drives daily so that your worst-case scenario will be a catastrophe that requires you to use a three-day old backup, depending upon how old your off-site backup is. Not ideal but better than the alternative. External drives are cheap enough these days to allow you to do this at a reasonable cost. Plus it is easy enough to throw one in a briefcase and tote it home for safety (just don't lose it!)
I would stay away from Retrospect. If you search these forums you will find several instances of folks having some serious issues with the program. I use a program called Carbon Copy Cloner that does the job nicely for my basement server. There are ways to do the backups via the command line interface as well but I am not so familiar with those commands. You may have to dig a little deeper to find something that works for you.
One of the other advantages of the FW external drive is that you can share it with other users, so perhaps you can set things up to have your network backups to go to that drive. Tis a thought.
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

Using Xserve with Sun StorageTek Disk Array

Hi
Is it possible to connect an Xserve with a Fibre Channel Card installed to a Sun StorageTek 6140 Disk Array?
I don't see any devices in /dev. Is the Xserve limited to the Xserve RAID or can it be used with other storage solutions? Do I need to purchase Xsan to do this (e.g. partition, format and mount a device from the Sun disk array)?
Xserve (Intel) Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Oh my, I should retire...
When I read that page I somehow confused all that X* stuff... :o/
I was wondering if it is possible to connect other
storage solutions than the Xserve RAID (like the Sun
StorageTek ones) directly (or via switch) to an
Xserve (the pizza box server )
Of course you can connect any DAS storage device that presents itself as a raw device on the device channel in use (fc, scsi, ...).
But reading the specs on that special Sun Raid I'd say that it falls into another category: SAN storage. And therefore it needs OS support/drivers which seem to be available only for Solaris, Linux and Win.
How exactly do I partition, format and mount the
virtual device under Mac OS X Server?
DiscUtility.app? In CLI: diskutil
I want to try this procedure:
Connect the Sun Diskarray to the Xserve via the
copper cables.
(Perhaps reboot the Xserve)
Partition with pdisk
mkfs.xfs (or something similar mac os like)
/dev/sda(x)
mount /dev/sda1 /Users/
diskutil
see man diskutil
But as said I guess you can't access this kind of SAN storage device.
Am I completely wrong? It's the procedure in Linux,
so it can't be very different in BSD (say: Mac OS
X)...
Same procedure as every year: install the driver then drink.
-Ralph

XServe and Mirrored RAID drives

I wonder if anyone can help me. An XServe of ours went down. It looks like it is the Logicboard. I have taken the system drive out and put it into a G5 machine and the OS opens fine. I took one of the RAID drives which were mirrored and put it into the second slot in the G5. The problem is that the drive did not have any of the files for the last 6 months. Then I removed that drive and put in the other RAID mirrored drive, and this drive had all the files on. I am a bit confused. If the drives were mirrored shouldn't the drives both have the same content on? Also if I change any of the files on that RAID mirrored drive will that affect the way the RAID is set up when I put the drives back in the XServe when my logicboard gets replaced?

Does that mean that RAID mirrored drives don't necessarily have the same files on? What is the point of calling it mirrored then. Also this makes no sense. Because isn't the point that if the one drive fails, you have an exact mirror of the drive to recover your files. How does this help, if a drive fails, and the other mirrored drive is missing files from the last 4 months. Luckily we have external drives connected to the XServe which daily backup the RAID drives on the XServe. But imagine if you didnt have this, and one of the drives failed.
If I had to reformatt the drives and then reinstall the data, would this possibly correct the weird issue with the RAID drives not being exactly mirrored?

Xserve with Xserve raid...

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