RAID 1 failure - Windows monitoring/status software for Adaptec

LeaUK · 2nd December 2007

Have recently experienced my first RAID 1 failure and she's now rebuilding (thankfully I had a hot-spare), however the machine is a Supermico and I'm running Adaptec RAID originally configured via the BIOS ARC tool, but are there any Windows tools available, similar to those included in HP's Smart Tools.

I need to understand why the drive failed (it's only 2 months old and it's a WD RE2), but as that maybe impossible I at least need to be informed that it's failed, and being remote I can't watch the HDD lights.

What I need is something similar to HP's Windows Smart controller with SNMP perhaps?

Any pointers welcomed.

Lea

LeaUK · 2nd December 2007

Ah, why didn't I spot the Supermicro Docter III app! Ok, it handles alerting, but still no Adaptec info

How will I know the RAID status?

othellotech · 2nd December 2007

did you install the Adaptec management software thats on the same disk as the supermicro doctor ?

and with your KVMoIP you can just look at the raid bios status over that surely ?

Dhosting · 3rd December 2007

Still remember that raid 1 failure we had last year, 1 drive was faulty didnt show up but caused data corruption, the raid array replication it, woooops.

Both Maxtor Enterprise SATA Drives.

I know of school i used to work for who had a raid failure again similar to our issue but with scsi drives.

Drives aren't built like they used to be!

LeaUK · 4th December 2007

Quote:

did you install the Adaptec management software thats on the same disk as the supermicro doctor

Did I RTFM? - of course not! My fingers are tingling with excitement

Quote:

and with your KVMoIP you can just look at the raid bios status over that surely

Uhm, didn't purchase that option

but I am tempted it has to be said. SM seem to offer quite a few versions, but the most expensive console redirect over IP has got to be the choice.

Cheers guys.
Lea

Karl · 4th December 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dhosting

Still remember that raid 1 failure we had last year, 1 drive was faulty didnt show up but caused data corruption, the raid array replication it, woooops.

Err... the only way that will happen is if you're using software RAID, you're rebuilding from a corrupted drive, or your RAID card is actually doing the corrupting of data - During normal operation hardware RAID-1 should not read from one drive and write it to the other drive, thus copying corrupted data.

othellotech · 4th December 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karl

ou're rebuilding from a corrupted drive

Happens (thankfully infrequently) that a hard-reboot / powercycle, can mangle a bit of a disk in an array. You'd probably never even notice while the the array is optimal, but does it throw a spanner in the works, when a drive fails - and the rebuild/re-mirror to your brand new disk is useless, because the source-disk has corrupt data

LeaUK · 9th January 2008

Well, I've had a NIGHTMARE with the Adaptec on board RAID:

1. Regularly drops drives (not HDD problem as I've swapped about etc)
2. Takes 3 days to rebuild a 500GB array
3. Acronis True Image fails to restore correctly

Adaptec on-board = waste of serious man hours.

Solution - use the alternative on-board Intel Matrix RAID, never dropped out, never rebuilds, never any problems and TI images and restores like a charm...

Reason I chose the Adaptec was that Intel doesn't support Hot Spare

I was 'that' close to going for a decent 3Ware 9650-8P...

Back to watching my new LCD ;-)

Lea

Karl · 9th January 2008

That's why I never touch OB RAID, not even in my PC. Just ordered an Areca 4 port PCI-e for my new PC.

PeteK · 10th January 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karl

That's why I never touch OB RAID, not even in my PC. Just ordered an Areca 4 port PCI-e for my new PC.

Have you experience of these or is this just a trial?

If you know then, what is their alerting like in the event of a failure please?

TIA

Karl · 10th January 2008

We've always used 3Ware in the past, but we're looking at switching to Areca (better performance, better software by all accounts). This will be a bit of a test, they support SNMP (which AMCC only just got around to).

PeteK · 10th January 2008

Cheers Karl.

When you've had a play / test let us all know what they are like will you as I am looking at the 8 porters for a punter who wants disk city attached to his carp colo box!

Cranky · 10th January 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeteK

Have you experience of these or is this just a trial?

If you know then, what is their alerting like in the event of a failure please?

TIA

The ones we have don't have any alerting feature but do support SNMP I believe. If you're running linux write a very simple script to check the status every hour or so.

[root@node26 ~]# cli32 vsf info
# Name Raid# Level Capacity Ch/Id/Lun State
================================================== =============================
1 ARC-1220-VOL#00 1 Raid6 1000.0GB 00/00/00 Normal
================================================== =============================
GuiErrMsg<0x00>: Success.
[root@node26 ~]#

If state != Normal it should send an alert.

PeteK · 10th January 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cranky

The ones we have don't have any alerting feature but do support SNMP I believe. If you're running linux write a very simple script to check the status every hour or so.

These will be going in windies boxes but so long as they support snmp then that is fine.... I am happier with that anyhow as it leaves all the monitoring in one place.

Cheers

Karl · 10th January 2008

12 port upwards they have a dedicated ethernet port on them for management etc. Manual (All 150 English Pages of it) also mentions email alerts for the cards 12 ports and up.