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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">If you install Dell Open Manage it:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><![if !supportLists]><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">a)<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Lets you see details of the PERC and the drives via web (on port 1311)
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><![if !supportLists]><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">b)<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Monitors the status of the PERC and drives and updates /var/log/messages so you could use logwatch to get messages.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><![if !supportLists]><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">c)<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Adds snmp capability so you can monitor via snmp using your favorite tool (e.g. Nagios).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">We use PERC in most of our PowerEdge systems. The first RAID set we configure if we have enough disks is reserved for OS components and we’ll usually have
2 partitions of that LUN, /dev/sda1 = /boot, /dev/sda2 = LVM PV for vg00. We usually will put remaining disks in a secondary RAID so that lun becomes /dev/sdb and we put that in a separate VG without partitioning at all and use that for non-OS components
(e.g. third party apps and databases).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Note:
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">PERC cards can fail so you’d want to be sure you have a spare if this system isn’t under support. The good news is that a replacement PERC can learn your
RAID setup from the drives themselves. Most the PERC (except early PERC 2 and earlier) are OEM from LSI. I think in 10 years I’ve only seen about 1 PERC failure per year with an average setup of more than 100 servers at any given point.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:windowtext">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:windowtext"> ale-bounces@ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces@ale.org]
<b>On Behalf Of </b>Jeff Hubbs<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, September 24, 2015 11:54 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> ale@ale.org<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [ale] Needing to cut up server disk space<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">I appreciate all the responses.<br>
<br>
So I guess what I'm hearing is 1) get over my HW RAID hate, RAID5 the lot using the PERC, and slice and dice with LVM or 2) forgo RAID altogether, use the PERC to make some kind of "appended" 2TB volume, and slice and dice with LVM. I'm willing to give up some
effective space to not have a dead box if a drive fails; just because it's a lab machine doesn't mean people won't be counting on it. I'm okay with that as long as I have a way to sense a drive failure flagged by the PERC.
<br>
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On 9/24/15 7:27 AM, Solomon Peachy wrote:<o:p></o:p></p>
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<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 11:42:37PM -0400, Jeff Hubbs wrote:<o:p></o:p></pre>
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<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> * I really dislike hardware RAID cards like Dell PERC. If there has to<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> be one, I would much rather set it to JBOD mode and get my RAIDing<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left:1.0in"> done some other way.<o:p></o:p></pre>
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<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">There's a big difference between "hardware" RAID (aka fakeRAID) and real <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">hardware RAID boards. The former are the worst of both worlds, but the <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">latter are the real deal.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">In particular, the various Dell PERC RAID adapters are excellent, fast, <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">and highly reliable, with full native linux support for managing them.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Strictly speaking you'll end up with more flexibility going the JBOD <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">route, but you're going to lose both performance and reliability versus <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">the PERC.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">(for example, what happens if the "boot" drive fails? Guess what, your <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> system is no longer bootable with the JBOD, but the PERC will work just <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> fine)<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
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<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> * I foresee I will have gnashing of teeth if I set in stone at install<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> time the sizes of the /var and /home volumes. There's no telling how<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> much or how little space PostgreSQL might need in the future and you<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:5.0pt;margin-left:1.0in"> know how GRAs are - give them disk space and they'll take disk space. :)<o:p></o:p></pre>
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<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">You're not talking about much space here; only 5*400 == 2TB of raw <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">space, going down to 1.6TV by the time the RAID5 overhead is factored <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">in. Just create a single 2TB filesystem and be done with it.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">FWIW, If you're after reliability I'd caution against btrfs, and instead <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">recommend XFS -- and make sure the system is plugged into a UPS. No <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">matter what, be sure to align the partition and filesystem with the <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">block/stripe sizes of the RAID setup.<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">(The system I'm typing this on has about ~10TB of XFS RAID5 filesystems <o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> hanging off a 3ware 9650 card, plus a 1TB RAID1 for the OS)<o:p></o:p></pre>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> - Solomon<o:p></o:p></pre>
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<pre style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<o:p></o:p></pre>
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