RE: Support for supermicro 7501 based boards and issues with 3ware raid cards

[Schafer, Christopher L]

Unfortunatally it is the only way to build raid arrays on the controllers. You can recover arrays from the os but not build them.

I will contact 3ware and see what they think...

Thanks

-----Original Message-----
From:	steven james [mailto:[e-mail]]
Sent:	Wed 3/26/2003 3:20 PM
To:	Schafer, Christopher L
Cc:	[e-mail]
Subject:	Re: Support for supermicro 7501 based boards and issues with 3ware raid cards

Greetings,

The 7501 chipset is supported, but the setup will probably need some
tweaking for the Supermicro. Currently, it's for Intel Clearwater
(se7501sw2).

The 2Ware BIOS tools will likely not work under LinuxBIOS. Are they
actually necessary, or just a convieniance (I've not worked with it)?

G'day,
sjames

On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Schafer, Christopher L wrote:
> Linux BIOS Team,
>
> I was wondering if there is any active work on the above Supermicro
> boards and are there issues with accessing the 3ware raid controllers
> bios tools if one is using linux BIOS?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Chris Schafer
> _______________________________________________
> Linuxbios mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

Support for supermicro 7501 based boards and issues with 3ware raid cards

[steven james]

Greetings,

It may be possible to do something with ADLO to get the BIOS tools
working.

Something to watch out for will be the detection and initialization of an
existing raid on boot. If BIOS on the card is doing that, it won't work in
LinuxBIOS without an ADLO (or similar) solution.

I have delt with Promise fastraid under LinuxBIOS, but the best solution
there was to mod the kernel driver to make it be a JBOD and use the Linux
md driver for RAID.

Is the 3Ware genuine hardware RAID, or is it a softraid solution?

G'day,
sjames

On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Schafer, Christopher L wrote:
> Unfortunatally it is the only way to build raid arrays on the controllers. You can recover arrays from the os but not build them.
>
> I will contact 3ware and see what they think...
>
> Thanks
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:	steven james [mailto:[e-mail]]
> Sent:	Wed 3/26/2003 3:20 PM
> To:	Schafer, Christopher L
> Cc:	[e-mail]
> Subject:	Re: Support for supermicro 7501 based boards and issues with 3ware raid cards
>
> Greetings,
>
> The 7501 chipset is supported, but the setup will probably need some
> tweaking for the Supermicro. Currently, it's for Intel Clearwater
> (se7501sw2).
>
> The 2Ware BIOS tools will likely not work under LinuxBIOS. Are they
> actually necessary, or just a convieniance (I've not worked with it)?
>
> G'day,
> sjames
>
> On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Schafer, Christopher L wrote:
> > Linux BIOS Team,
> >
> > I was wondering if there is any active work on the above Supermicro
> > boards and are there issues with accessing the 3ware raid controllers
> > bios tools if one is using linux BIOS?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Chris Schafer
> > _______________________________________________
> > Linuxbios mailing list
> > [e-mail]
> > http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

Support for supermicro 7501 based boards and issues with 3ware raid cards

steven james  writes:
> Greetings,
>
> It may be possible to do something with ADLO to get the BIOS tools
> working.
>
> Something to watch out for will be the detection and initialization of an
> existing raid on boot. If BIOS on the card is doing that, it won't work in
> LinuxBIOS without an ADLO (or similar) solution.
>
> I have delt with Promise fastraid under LinuxBIOS, but the best solution
> there was to mod the kernel driver to make it be a JBOD and use the Linux
> md driver for RAID.
>
> Is the 3Ware genuine hardware RAID, or is it a softraid solution?

Generally what I have seen is that real hardware raid solutions are
not just x86 only, and they work under LinuxBIOS.  Because they do
not need the x86 BIOS.

For IDE raid I have not heard that those are actually real hardware raid.

For an onboard controller even an ADLO type solution will be insufficient
because installing LinuxBIOS will kill the option Rom.

Basically it is a matter of getting it to work under Linux without
needing an option Rom.  And for scsi that has not been a problem.

Eric

Support for supermicro 7501 based boards and issues with 3ware raid cards

[Bryan O'Sullivan]

On Thu, 2003-03-27 at 02:48, steven james wrote:
> Is the 3Ware genuine hardware RAID, or is it a softraid solution?

3ware cards are hardware RAID cards, yes.  In addition, you don't need
to go through the 3ware BIOS to manage them; 3ware ships both a
web-based management tool and a command-line tool.  At worst (if you
want to use the controller as a boot device), you end up doing a network
or CD-ROM boot, setting up the controller and installing an OS, then
booting off the controller.

<b

Support for supermicro 7501 based boards and issues with 3ware raid cards

[Vincent Touquet]

Note that they also have a web based tool called 3DM,
in which you can do everything you want to (the same
and more options as in the BIOS).

So you could do all your RAID setup on your nodes
in early user space, so after you loaded the kernel ?

Its probably possible to do it before you load the
kernel. I'm quite optimistic that you could get
some support from 3ware on this front as they
are in general very good citizens :)

best regards,
Vincent

On Wed, Mar 26, 2003 at 08:31:09PM -0800, Schafer, Christopher L wrote:
> Unfortunatally it is the only way to build raid arrays on the controllers. You can recover arrays from the os but not build them.
>
> I will contact 3ware and see what they think...
>
> Thanks
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:	steven james [mailto:[e-mail]]
> Sent:	Wed 3/26/2003 3:20 PM
> To:	Schafer, Christopher L
> Cc:	[e-mail]
> Subject:	Re: Support for supermicro 7501 based boards and issues with 3ware raid cards
>
> Greetings,
>
> The 7501 chipset is supported, but the setup will probably need some
> tweaking for the Supermicro. Currently, it's for Intel Clearwater
> (se7501sw2).
>
> The 2Ware BIOS tools will likely not work under LinuxBIOS. Are they
> actually necessary, or just a convieniance (I've not worked with it)?
>
> G'day,
> sjames
>
> On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Schafer, Christopher L wrote:
> > Linux BIOS Team,
> >
> > I was wondering if there is any active work on the above Supermicro
> > boards and are there issues with accessing the 3ware raid controllers
> > bios tools if one is using linux BIOS?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Chris Schafer
> > _______________________________________________
> > Linuxbios mailing list
> > [e-mail]
> > http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
>
> Linuxbios mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

Support for supermicro 7501 based boards and issues with 3ware raid cards

[Justin Cormack]

On Sat, 2003-04-19 at 11:05, Vincent Touquet wrote:
> Note that they also have a web based tool called 3DM,
> in which you can do everything you want to (the same
> and more options as in the BIOS).
>
> So you could do all your RAID setup on your nodes
> in early user space, so after you loaded the kernel ?
>
> Its probably possible to do it before you load the
> kernel. I'm quite optimistic that you could get
> some support from 3ware on this front as they
> are in general very good citizens :)

No, you cannot create arrays from the web tool.

And there is no source to 3dm. I dont think you will find them that
cooperative either.

Try running the BIOS under wmulation I guess.

Justin