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Thread: RAID Controller/Manageability

  1. #1

    Default RAID Controller/Manageability

    We are planning to buy 2 new servers and installing Open-E in a cluster scenario to support a Hyper-V R2 cluster.

    I am trying to decide which RAID controller to buy (probably under $600). I am hoping that we can get e-mail alerts when drives fail, but I am confused about what is required for that to happen.

    We are considering RAID controller LSI MegaRAID SAS 9260-4i, primarily because Open-E seems to provide lots of support for it. Would this controller allow us to get e-mail alerts when a drive fails, or when the RAID controller battery is low? How about other controllers on the HCL, such as HP P410?

    Thanks,
    Dave

  2. #2

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    New 9500S RAID controller builds on manageability, performance ... Feature; InfoWorld's 2010 Technology of the Year Awards. The InfoWorld Test Center picks the year's best

  3. #3
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Location
    Hamburg, Germany
    Posts
    108

    Default

    Dave,

    we're using Areca controllers, which for the larger models (you didn't say how many drives you're going to attach) have an extra Ethernet port for out-of-band RAID management including SMTP notifications and SNMP. An on-the-box agent for the cards is included in the DSS package, which is capable of SMTP notifications, too. Haven't tried that with DSS, though. (I've been using that on the box agent with other Linux installations without problems).

    Regards,
    Jens

  4. #4

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    do consider Adaptec's "Zero maintenance" series.....I got a pair of 5805Z.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    austria, vienna
    Posts
    137

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    Not an answer to your question, but be careful, DSS v6 failover cluster has issues with Hyper-V failover cluster yet (BSOD of VMs when doing iSCSI failover on DSS). At the moment you must put your VMs to saved state before you can failover on DSS. I hope open-e is working on that problem ...

    BTW: We use also Areca controller which works well with DSS.
    regards,
    Lukas

    descience.NET
    Dr. Lukas Pfeiffer
    A-1140 Wien
    Austria
    www.dotnethost.at

    DSS v6 b4550 iSCSI autofailover with Windows 2008 R2 failover cluster (having still some issues with autofailover).

    2 DSS: 3HE Supermicro X7DBE BIOS 2.1a, Areca ARC-1261ML FW 1.48, 8x WD RE3 1TB, 1x Intel PRO1000MT Dualport, 1x Intel PRO1000PT Dualport.

    2 Windows Nodes: Intel SR1500 + Intel SR1560, Dual XEON E54xx, 32 GB RAM, 6 NICs. Windows Server 2008 R2.

  6. #6

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by pfeifferl
    Not an answer to your question, but be careful, DSS v6 failover cluster has issues with Hyper-V failover cluster yet (BSOD of VMs when doing iSCSI failover on DSS). At the moment you must put your VMs to saved state before you can failover on DSS. I hope open-e is working on that problem ...

    BTW: We use also Areca controller which works well with DSS.
    pfeifferl, you meant if the primary DSS is turned off, all the VMs will go into BSOD when the secondary DSS is taking over the job?

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    austria, vienna
    Posts
    137

    Default

    During the failover/failback there is a short outage in iSCSI connection. There are lots of error events in Windows event log (e.g. "Initiator failed to connect to the target." ...) on cluster nodes and the cluster disks are going offline and online again. Only a few seconds, but the VMs running on cluster (with CSV) are crashing a few seconds after that occures.

    I've opened a trouble ticket at open-e support, but no answer yet ...

    So my workaround is to save the VMs, doing the DSS failover and start the VMs again. It's bad for a HA scenario, but the only way at the moment ...
    regards,
    Lukas

    descience.NET
    Dr. Lukas Pfeiffer
    A-1140 Wien
    Austria
    www.dotnethost.at

    DSS v6 b4550 iSCSI autofailover with Windows 2008 R2 failover cluster (having still some issues with autofailover).

    2 DSS: 3HE Supermicro X7DBE BIOS 2.1a, Areca ARC-1261ML FW 1.48, 8x WD RE3 1TB, 1x Intel PRO1000MT Dualport, 1x Intel PRO1000PT Dualport.

    2 Windows Nodes: Intel SR1500 + Intel SR1560, Dual XEON E54xx, 32 GB RAM, 6 NICs. Windows Server 2008 R2.

  8. #8

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by pfeifferl
    During the failover/failback there is a short outage in iSCSI connection. There are lots of error events in Windows event log (e.g. "Initiator failed to connect to the target." ...) on cluster nodes and the cluster disks are going offline and online again. Only a few seconds, but the VMs running on cluster (with CSV) are crashing a few seconds after that occures.

    I've opened a trouble ticket at open-e support, but no answer yet ...

    So my workaround is to save the VMs, doing the DSS failover and start the VMs again. It's bad for a HA scenario, but the only way at the moment ...
    You're using Supermicro + Areca, not sure if it's related, but mine is Dell R710 + Adaptec 5805Z. I will try out the fail over sometime and let you know if it would also crash all the VMs due to lost in iSCSI connection. I will need sometime....

    What you mentioned is not a workaround.....if your primary DSS fail, that's it. Are you running any SCOM + SCVMM to auto reboot all the VM when the secondary DSS takes over successfully?

  9. #9

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by moral
    New 9500S RAID controller builds on manageability, performance ... Feature; InfoWorld's 2010 Technology of the Year Awards. The InfoWorld Test Center picks the year's best
    Read out Cleveland Launcher 460CC Driver review.

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