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31_Hardware_RAID_Setup

Marc A. Smith edited this page Mar 3, 2017 · 3 revisions

Getting Started

There are two broad steps when provisioning storage with ESOS: The first is configuring your back-end storage device which is typically a hardware RAID controller, software RAID (MD) arrays, LVM logical volumes, virtual disk files on file systems, or can be anything else that appears as a SCSI block device in Linux. Enterprise Storage OS includes a number of different Linux block device subsystems such as DRBD, Linux software RAID (md), and LVM2 so the possibilities are quite endless.

The second step is configuring your front side target devices, the targets that are made available via your SAN. This will be covered in the subsequent ESOS wiki pages (hosts/initiators, devices, and targets).


RAID Controller TUI Functions

ESOS has limited support for provisioning/configuring logical drives via the TUI. Not all hardware RAID controllers are currently supported. These are the currently supported controllers: Broadcom/Avago/LSI MegaRAID, Microsemi/Adaptec AACRAID, and Dell PERC controllers. Using these functions requires the proprietary CLI tools be to included when installing ESOS to your USB flash drive (StorCLI, perccli, and arcconf). Advanced controller properties, spanned logical drives, etc. are not supported using the TUI.

To add a new logical drive (Hardware RAID -> Add Volume) you will first select the desired RAID controller; next you will be presented with screen that contains the available physical drives. Select the drives and hit ENTER (or ESCAPE to cancel). On the final dialog, you will choose the RAID level, cache options, etc. and then hit 'OK' to proceed with creating the volume or 'Cancel' to do nothing and close the dialog.

Deleting volumes / logical drives (Hardware RAID -> Remove Volume) is also possible via the TUI.

In addition, you can also add hot spare drives (Hardware RAID -> Add Hot Spare) and even remove hot spare drives (Hardware RAID -> Remove Hot Spare) which are attached to the RAID controller.

After you have configured your hardware RAID logical drive(s), you can now proceed with creating LVM logical volumes, creating a file system on the new device and adding virtual disks, move on to adding your SCST device(s), or even configuring advanced storage options.


Local RAID Controller: LSI MegaRAID (CLI)

The Broadcom/Avago/LSI "MegaCLI" utility is an install option with ESOS (during the installation script). This tool is now deprecated, and StorCLI is the current tool used. We'll cover MegaCLI below for reference purposes.

The utility allows you to create/delete/modify volumes (virtual drives) on your MegaRAID controller. Below are a few examples of using the MegaCLI tool (MegaCli64 for us). A nice handy cheat sheet is located here. Or for a very in-depth document, consult the user guide available on Broadcom's web site.

Get adapter information for the first MegaRAID adapter (0):

MegaCli64 -AdpAllInfo -a0

A list of all the adapter's physical drives:

MegaCli64 -PDList -a0

All of the logical drives for the adapter:

MegaCli64 -LDInfo -Lall -a0

Delete logical drive 0:

MegaCli64 -CfgLdDel -L0 -a0

Create a new RAID5 logical drive, with three physical disks, adaptive read-ahead (ADRA) and write cache enabled (WB):

MegaCli64 -CfgLDAdd -R5[8:0,8:1,8:2] WB ADRA -a0

Create a new RAID0 logical drive, with two physical disks, no read-ahead (NORA) and write cache disabled (WT):

MegaCli64 -CfgLDAdd -R0[8:0,8:1] WT NORA -a0

After you have created your new volume(s) you will need to find and record the SCSI device node (eg, /dev/sdz). You can easily find this using lsscsi or checking dmesg.


Local RAID Controller: Adaptec AACRAID (CLI)

The arcconf utility is also an install option with ESOS for configuring Microsemi/Adaptec AACRAID controllers from inside the OS. This tool should work with most/all Microsemi/Adaptec SATA/SAS RAID controllers.

See all controller/drive/volume information for controller # 1:

arcconf GETCONFIG 1

Delete logical device (volume) 1 on controller 1:

arcconf DELETE 1 LOGICALDRIVE 1

Make a new RAID5 volume on controller 1 using three disks (channel 0, device numbers 2, 3, 4) with read cache enabled and write cache enabled:

arcconf CREATE 1 LOGICALDRIVE Rcache RON Wcache WB MAX 5 0 2 0 3 0 4

Make a new RAID0 volume on controller 1 using two disks (channel 0, device numbers 2, 3) with read cache disabled and write cache disabled:

arcconf CREATE 1 LOGICALDRIVE Rcache ROFF Wcache WT MAX 0 0 2 0 3

Once you've created a new volume on your AACRAID controller, grab the SCSI device node (lsscsi works well) and continue with one of the target configuration sections below.


Local RAID Controller: Other

Other RAID controllers are supported, however, not all of them necessarily have a CLI tool for configuring volumes, adapter settings, etc. from inside of ESOS. See the 03_Supported_Hardware wiki page for a current list of supported controllers and possible corresponding CLI utilities.

You can still use these other controllers with ESOS, you will just need to configure your volumes / logical drives "outside" of ESOS -- via the BIOS. Or seek the documentation for using the CLI tools on your own.

If you find that your favorite "enterprise class" RAID controller is not supported by ESOS, please let us know on the esos-users Google Group. It would also be helpful to know if there are any CLI management tools that can be used to configure these controllers from inside the OS.


Next Steps

Now that you have setup and configured your basic hardware RAID storage, you can continue on to the 35_Hosts_and_Initiators wiki document to setup your security groups and initiators. Or if you have advanced storage needs, use the 41_Advanced_Storage_Setup page for additional information.