Am 03.07.2013 21:34, schrieb Paul Hartman: > On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 2:29 AM, Stefan G. Weichinger <li...@xunil.at> wrote: >> Am 03.07.2013 00:42, schrieb Paul Hartman: >>> On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 2:56 PM, Stefan G. Weichinger <li...@xunil.at> wrote: >>>> >>>> Does anyone use that controller with gentoo? >>>> >>>> If yes, which driver/module does support it? >>>> >>>> I ordered one for a server and did not really check the facts ;-) >>> >>> Looks like it uses the LSI SAS2008 chipset (basically LSI controller >>> with HP branding), so you should enable kernel module mpt2sas >>> (CONFIG_SCSI_MPT2SAS) and probably some other SAS-related options will >>> be required as well if you don't already use them. >>> >>> I actually just installed a card with this same chipset in my Gentoo >>> machine yesterday! I have not attached disks to it yet, as I am >>> waiting for the enclosure to be delivered, but so far nothing froze or >>> burst into flames when the module loaded. :) I even upgraded the BIOS >>> and firmware on the card from within linux and everything seems okay, >>> so far. >> >> Thanks a lot, Paul, for that feedback. Seems that you will be the first >> to really test it, my box will arrive next week, I assume. This will be >> an installation from scratch so no SAS-related stuff there already. >> >> I wonder if it makes sense to attach the disks to that adapter as well? >> This box will do amanda backups ... so there will be the amanda holding >> disk and it is important to have maximum speed between that holding area >> and the tape drive. I plan RAID1 on 2x2TB disks at least or maybe even >> RAID0 (it's a rather temporary storage area so the redundancy isn't that >> important). Testing will show! > > Mine will be attached to an external 8-disk storage array with 2 > external SAS cables (4 disks per cable). I had a 5-disk 8TB software > RAID5 in my computer that I had to remove due to an unplanned > motherboard upgrade. Right now the disks are in a cheap external > 5-disk eSATA/USB JBOD enclosure plugged into the eSATA port on my > motherboard, but it's not able to access all disks at the same time, > so the RAID5 performance is awful. Around 10-20 MB/sec on writes and > max 50MB/sec on reads. (It was previously 100MB+/sec for both > operations.) > > In the eSATA enclosure, a single scrub (check) of my array takes FOUR > DAYS to complete! I worry about what will happen if I have to replace > a disk, the rebuild would take forever... what if there is a power > outage and my UPS battery only lasts around 30 minutes? > > I bought two of the lowest-quality 4tb Seagate drives for US$140 each > on sale and plan to use them to make a backup copy of my files from > the RAID onto those drives. So far I have never made a backup of my > RAID because I never had enough storage space to duplicate it all. > "RAID is not a backup" has been repeating in my head for all these > years. Horror stories about a corrupt filesystem, or 1 bad sector > causing the whole RAID5 rebuild to fail. Now that I will have extra > drive bays, maybe I can add a second parity drive and try to do an > online upgrade from RAID5 to RAID6. I definitely want to make a good > backup before I try that... > > I am hopeful that the SAS controller and enclosure should give me high > performance again! I will let you know how it goes. > > BTW, I am using the latest 3.9 series linux kernel.
My planned box will be a stable gentoo installation so that will mean 3.8.13 for now. No problem, I assume. Thanks for your description ... good luck with that! I will maybe pre-install that system in a VM until the hardware gets here ;-) Stefan
