Smart Array 6i and FreeBSD 6.1

Hi List.

I am newbie when it comes to HP Proliant servers and just
recently got
one DL385 Dual(DC) Opteron in my hands, which will replace a
dual Xeon
2.4 Server.. The DL385 hardware makes a very good impression
to me.
Looks very high quality. Every component just snaps into
place and you
don't need any tools to server parts, nice!

Maybe you can help me with some questions?

userland software for the smart array 6i:

I heard that there is a userland binary for the smart array
6i available
from HP which is said to work with FreeBSD (Linux
emulation).
Where do I find this Linux package? (RPM?) I searched HP but
cannot find
 the stuff.

What Linux port is needed for the raidcontroller software,
emulators/linux_base or emulators/linux_base-8 ?


environmental monitoring:

It seems that the mbmon port does not work with the DL385
hardware. How
can I monitor the server/cpu temperature of the server in a
100% FreeBSD
environment? Is there a way to make snmp queries to the ilo
Interface
and use an snmp oid that gives back temperature an fanhealth
values?

"raid5-angst" - opinions:

Although not directly FreeBSD related, maybe you can give
some advice on
the following..

I have some fellow admins who suffer from what I call
"raid5-angst" 
When I installed the server recently and decided to go with
raid5
(previously we only had raid 0+1) they at once come up with
stories of
"this guy" whose raid5 crashed - even with a
hotspare drive - because
during the rebuild that took "very long" another
physical drive died..
now how probable is that?!

what's your opinion on that? I think they got some point
when they claim
"when you bring your raid in production you buy
several hard drives that
almost always have similar serial nombers. So when one drive
fails you,
chances are high that a very similar disk will break down
also.."

Well, the smart array 6i doesn't offer Raid 6 / ADG - this
would be
safer, but I think a hot spare physical drive must be
sufficient. (BTW:
Anyone know if a hot spare drive is spinning, while it's
waiting for
another drive to fail? - just nosy..)

Any help appreciated,
Kai.

-- 

 "That's a huge mistake, and anybody that does it
that way (FreeBSD)
 is totally incompetent" und "I claim that Mach
people (and apparently
 FreeBSD) are incompetent idiots"
    Linus Torvalds - "Inventor" of operating
system Linux
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On Tue, Sep 12, 2006, Kai Gallasch wrote:

> userland software for the smart array 6i:
> 
> I heard that there is a userland binary for the smart
array 6i available
> from HP which is said to work with FreeBSD (Linux
emulation).
> Where do I find this Linux package? (RPM?) I searched
HP but cannot find
>  the stuff.

I guess you're talking about the tools at [1]. AFAIK those
tools do not
work on recent FreeBSD releases but I may be wrong. OTOH any
important
status change in the RAID set is reported by the ciss(4)
driver.
Monitoring /var/log/messages might to the job. I posted this
some weeks
ago to the list [2], so you can get some impression if this
is good
enough for your requirements.

> environmental monitoring:
> 
> It seems that the mbmon port does not work with the
DL385 hardware. How
> can I monitor the server/cpu temperature of the server
in a 100% FreeBSD
> environment? Is there a way to make snmp queries to the
ilo Interface
> and use an snmp oid that gives back temperature an
fanhealth values?

AFAIK you can't. It would be very nice to have hardware
monitoring via
iLO. This can be achieved under so called supported
platforms, aka
Linux or Windows, where you have to run HP agent software
which does
hardware monitoring of the underlying hardware. IMHO a
rather weired
approach, seems like HP has solved the chicken-and-egg
problem ;) IIRC
the results of the agents are being written in some kind of
message
buffer which can be polled by the iLO. Unfortunatelly the
iLO doesn't
have any OS independent logic to do all the stuff on its
own. I address
this as feature request several times at HP but it seems
that one single
customer is not important enough.

> "raid5-angst" - opinions:

I guess this depends on your application. For database
applications
RAID5 might result in poor write performance. In such
scenaries I prefer
3 RAID1 sets where I'm distributing my table spaces. If you
need just
max file capacity with redunandy there are not many
alternatives to
a RAID5 set. Speaking for HP's SCSI drives I've never seen
two disks
failing at the very same time in the past 5 years. After all
they are
quite reliable. Nevertheless, this is no guarantee. But keep
in mind, of
both sub-mirrors of a RAID 1/0+1 fail a the same time, the
result is the
same.

[1] http://people.free
bsd.org/~jcagle/
[2] http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/free
bsd-hardware/2006-July/003602.html

-cs
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Christoph Schug wrote:
 > Kai Gallasch wrote:
 > > userland software for the smart array 6i:
 > > 
 > > I heard that there is a userland binary for the
smart array 6i available
 > > from HP which is said to work with FreeBSD (Linux
emulation).
 > > Where do I find this Linux package? (RPM?) I
searched HP but cannot find
 > >  the stuff.
 > 
 > I guess you're talking about the tools at [1]. AFAIK
those tools do not
 > work on recent FreeBSD releases but I may be wrong.
 > [1] http://people.free
bsd.org/~jcagle/

They work fine on 6.1-RELEASE (and RELENG_6) if compat5 is
installed.

 > > environmental monitoring:
 > > 
 > > It seems that the mbmon port does not work with
the DL385 hardware. How
 > > can I monitor the server/cpu temperature of the
server in a 100% FreeBSD
 > > environment? Is there a way to make snmp queries
to the ilo Interface
 > > and use an snmp oid that gives back temperature
an fanhealth values?
 > 
 > AFAIK you can't.

You can.  The hpasmd/hpasmcli tools at [1] (see above) can
be used for that purpose.  (One important thing is that
hpasmd should only be started with the -i option.  Without
it, random reboots can happen under certain conditions.)
See example below.

Regarding RAID5:  Personally I try to avoid it.  If HA is
a concern, I recommend to use RAID1.

Just my 2 cents.

Best regards
   Oliver

PS:  Using hpasmd + hpasmcli on a HP ProLiant DL360 G4 to
report temperature, fans, and UID LED status:

# uname -rs
FreeBSD 6.1-STABLE
# hpasmcli -s "show temp; show fans; show uid"

Sensor   Location              Temp       Threshold
------   --------              ----       ---------
#0        SYSTEM_BD             -          -
#1        I/O_ZONE             38C/100F   63C/145F
#2        CPU#1                46C/114F   85C/185F
#3        CPU#2                47C/116F   85C/185F
#4        POWER_SUPPLY_BAY     32C/89F    48C/118F
#5        SYSTEM_BD            30C/86F    41C/105F

Fan  Location        Present Speed  of max  Redundant 
Partner  Hot-pluggable
---  --------        ------- -----  ------  --------- 
-------  -------------
#1   PROCESSOR_ZONE  Yes     NORMAL 49%     Yes        0    
   No
#2   SYSTEM          Yes     NORMAL 49%     Yes        0    
   No

UID is currently off.

# hpasmcli -s "set uid on"

UID is now on.


-- 
Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29,
85567 Grafing
Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd

Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to
the author
and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in
any way.

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