Areca Radi cards - Centos

RichieP · 14th April 2008

We've just taken delivery of a number of new Dell R200's and We're evaluating which raid cards to go for.

Our first test has been with a Areca 1200 2port Sata II card. The problem is that the drivers don't seem to be included in our choice of OS, Centos 5.1. We have done the driver disk 'stuff' and can get a working solution up until we do a Yum update and the kernel changes! and bang no raid card drivers

So the point of this post - are we missing something, is this just a problem because the 1200 is such a new card? If we rent a server to a client one would expect them to do a yum update? Do the 3ware cards suffer the same?

Any advice/experience appreciated

Thanks in advance

Richard

Cyberprog · 14th April 2008

Did you not consider the SAS6iR?

RichieP · 14th April 2008

SAS6iR - We considered it, and we may ultimately go that way, but I suspected (May be incorrectly) that this wasn't really hardware raid.

Richard

JamieBeeston · 14th April 2008

It is hardware RAID, it's a removable PCI card which works a treat (assuming it's the same as the 860s were, which it should be given its the same model, most definitely not like he 1425 pseudo RAID)

J

Cyberprog · 15th April 2008

Yeah, it's a seperate hardware raid controller, just seems a little strange you didn't specify it when you bought the machine, as i'm sure they'll be quite a bit more expensive to buy seperatley.

pipeten · 15th April 2008

They're £ 73+VAT @ 6iR list price and they've been including them FOC while they have been shifting what one would assume are some of the last 80GB SATA stocks (2 x 80GB).

Cyberprog · 15th April 2008

Yes, that's what I mean, they're £73 on the dell website when you buy with the machine IIRC, they tend to be a bit more expensive seperatley

pipeten · 15th April 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyberprog

Yes, that's what I mean, they're £73 on the dell website when you buy with the machine IIRC, they tend to be a bit more expensive seperatley

1 SAS 6iR internal RAID controller, PCI-e (Kit) £ 57.54
1 Intel PRO 1000VT Quad Port Gigabit Network Card, PCI-E (Kit) £ 223.74
1 INTEL PRO1000PT Dual Port CU NIC, PCI-E (Kit) £ 68.72

That's the price I got 3rd of this month for buying individually.

TerryFroy · 15th April 2008

Hi,

RHEL5 Update 1 (aka CentOS 5.1) has explicit support for Areca RAID cards.

Source: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/e...U1-x86-en.html

(tip: search for 'arcmsr' in the above document)

Is it simply a case that the 'arcmsr' driver included with CentOS 5.1 is not new enough for this particular card ?

This is from one of my CentOS 5.1 boxes (running latest available CentOS kernel):

[admin@ifl2-gw1 ~]$ rpm -ql kernel | grep arcmsr
/lib/modules/2.6.18-53.1.14.el5/kernel/drivers/scsi/arcmsr
/lib/modules/2.6.18-53.1.14.el5/kernel/drivers/scsi/arcmsr/arcmsr.ko

I wonder if the Areca-supplied drivers use the 'arcmsr' driver name or some other name - check your modprobe.conf file and change it to arcmsr if all else fails.

Regards,
Terry Froy
Spilsby Internet Solutions
http://www.spilsby.net/

Cyberprog · 15th April 2008

Hrm, I stand corrected then, that's not bad at all.

RichieP · 15th April 2008

Thanks for the info.... just a small thing, I was asking about anyones experience with areca cards.. not getting grumpy

(And yes I do have my Dell account manager quoting for cards - can anyone connfirm they have centos 5.1 support out of the box/dvd/cd)

Thanks

pipeten · 15th April 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyberprog

Hrm, I stand corrected then, that's not bad at all.

I was a bit surprised too, it's not the usual 'Dell way'.

Cyberprog · 15th April 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by pipeten

I was a bit surprised too, it's not the usual 'Dell way'.

Yeah, the Dell way is normally the full screw for bits like that.

adamsmith · 16th April 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by RichieP

Thanks for the info.... just a small thing, I was asking about anyones experience with areca cards.. not getting grumpy

(And yes I do have my Dell account manager quoting for cards - can anyone connfirm they have centos 5.1 support out of the box/dvd/cd)

Thanks

No problem whatsoever with CentOS 5.1 stock kernel under the mptsas driver

.

We use them a lot in customer dedis and they're very good for a 'cost effective' RAID solution.

RichieP · 16th April 2008

Out-of-date driver ?

Is it simply a case that the 'arcmsr' driver included with CentOS 5.1 is not new enough for this particular card ?

This is from one of my CentOS 5.1 boxes (running latest available CentOS kernel):

[admin@ifl2-gw1 ~]$ rpm -ql kernel | grep arcmsr
/lib/modules/2.6.18-53.1.14.el5/kernel/drivers/scsi/arcmsr
/lib/modules/2.6.18-53.1.14.el5/kernel/drivers/scsi/arcmsr/arcmsr.ko

I wonder if the Areca-supplied drivers use the 'arcmsr' driver name or some other name - check your modprobe.conf file and change it to arcmsr if all else fails.

Hi Terry,

I think your right the card is almost as new as 5.1. As a clue when you do the OS install you have to load the driver seperately. I've done the 'readme.txt' install post the OS install and all is ok, its just when the kernel gets upgraded to 53.1.14 as above (via Yum) that the system then won't boot as no raid disc is found. Its a shame because it seems like a great card for not much more money than a sas6ir. I'll email areca tomorrow and see what they say. I have 8 machines as a first batch that I'm building identical so I want to get it right

Thanks