Dear Sirs.
I want to split my question into two parts. The first one is highly
FreeBSD dependend, the second one is a kind of SOS out into the SCSI guru
world.
First part.
Prior to this date I worked with some Mylex RAID controlers, especially
960DPT and similar. I had only once an array failure with this controler
due a hdd damage and I realized, that the Mylex driver in FreeBSD is very
eloquent a way. it told me many things about what was wrong and what was
happening. And I realized that there is a tool which is able to control
the Mylex RAID controler. This week I installed a RAID V with the AMI
MegaRAID Enterprise 1600 and just for fun I pulled out a case with one
harddrive while running FreeBSD. The controler reacts on this with a wild
beeping and beeping does not stop until the array has been rebuild or
checked on consistency. But there was no message of any kind of error or
drive failure or that the controler moans due some drive failures. Is this
normal or is there a special way to check this?
Another question regards to the way the controler acts with its
harddrives. How can I figure out in which way the controler accesses its
drives? Means: how to check whether Ultra2/160m, FAST, Wide/Ultra Wide or
simply Ultra 16 Bit is used as protocol? The reason why I want to know
this is explained in part two ...
Second part.
I tried to build up an RAID 5 array with eight IBM DDYS 36LXZ drives, each
SCSI-3/160m capable. I use these drives in conjunction with the AMI
MegaRAID Enterprise 1600 controler. These drives are fitted into metal hot
plug capable cases, eight pieces, each of them is connected to the RAID
controler via a 1.75m long Adaptec Ultra/160m special ribbon cable. The
plugging technology is HD68, not SCA. The RAID controler delivers no
TermPWR, it is configured as it is set by factory, so PCI delivers
TermPWR. It is not possible to initialize, initiate or access a eight
drive array in 160m mode and results are only then achieveable when
forcing all drives delivering TermPWR and PCI not (against the
convention!). I checked the drives, they are all right, I changed the
controler, it's all right, I checked a bunch of cables, they're all
right. I splitted the array into two parts, 4 drives at channel 0, the
others at channel 1, but the results are more than confusing. It a book of
horrors what I did and tried out to figure out how things work. The only
way to force this configuration to work is to force each harddrive to work
in SE mode, there is a jumper on it. Well, that means no 160m protocoll,
that means owning a jet and driving it on a highway with 100 km/h, isn't
it? I pretend that the way I try to attach the array to the controler is
not the right way, but we obtained an expensive case but I do not have a
SCA backplane for it, so I need to attach the drives by HD68. On the other
hand: we spent a lot of money to obtain 9 IBM 36GB harddrives in HD68
technology, so: if the problem is highly depend on the way I attach the
drives to the controler, is there a way to do this by HD68
equipment? Thanks a lot for your help. Maybe there is someone who's done
this task, too.
Please send any tip to the following address per email:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
because our main server is down between the years due maintanance.
Thanks a lot, have a nice, new millenium ...
Oliver
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