Intel RAID controller in Linux
Posted on: February 26, 2009
In the lab, we have an extraordinary super server, which has dual quad-core and 4GB memory.This server has a RAID controller, and we usually do not use RAID. The first reason is we don’t have such a complex storage system and usually do not need to have such high storage performance.
It’s the time to use the RAID controller when running several virtual machines with file-backed storage. The normal SATA disk is the biggest bottleneck in the experiment. It does not provide sustained performance when lots of read operations to the virtual machine disk images, which are spread over the disk. This increases the random read/write operations a lot and the disk performance severely affects the overall system performance.
I use RAID0 (stripping for the increased read performance) with two 64GB SSD (Samsung). The name of the Intel RAID controller is SRCSATAWB (seems like a series of meaningless characters). The Linux device driver of this controller is “LSI Logic …”.
I put LSI Logic New Generation RAID device drivers, LSI Logic Legacy MegaRAID, and LSI MegaRAID SAS RAID Module. (Device Drivers > SCSI device support > SCSI low-level drivers) into the kernel.
10 Responses to "Intel RAID controller in Linux"
March 11, 2009 at 11:33 am
How did you configure the RAID ?
Only with Intel RAID BIOS Console Utility ?
Which distrib of linux do you have ?
March 12, 2009 at 2:30 am
You’re right. I used Intel RAID BIOS “console” utility to configure RAIO0.
I’m using Debian testing version.
But I used the vanila kernel when I posted.
March 12, 2009 at 3:54 pm
How did you “mount” RAID array ? so it can be displayed in: df -h
March 13, 2009 at 2:12 am
Once you configure the RAID correctly and the device driver is installed in the kernel successfully, I see the hdd (or raid) detection message in the boot log.
You can see the message with ‘tail -n 100 /var/log/messages’ or boot log message file, which is highly dependent the distribution you use.
My log is —
Mar 12 13:50:42 ca8 kernel: [ 3.720831] scsi0 : LSI SAS based MegaRAID driver
Mar 12 13:50:42 ca8 kernel: [ 3.720831] scsi 0:0:9:0: Direct-Access ATA SAMSUNG MCCOE64G 5006 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
Mar 12 13:50:42 ca8 kernel: [ 3.720831] scsi 0:0:10:0: Direct-Access ATA SAMSUNG MCCOE64G 5006 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
Mar 12 13:50:42 ca8 kernel: [ 3.770787] scsi 0:2:0:0: Direct-Access INTEL SRCSATAWB 1.12 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
Mar 12 13:50:42 ca8 kernel: [ 3.817396] Driver ‘sd’ needs updating – please use bus_type methods
Mar 12 13:50:42 ca8 kernel: [ 3.817396] sd 0:2:0:0: [sda] 246091776 512-byte hardware sectors (125999 MB)
Mar 12 13:50:42 ca8 kernel: [ 3.817396] sd 0:2:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
Mar 12 13:50:42 ca8 kernel: [ 3.817396] sd 0:2:0:0: [sda] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, supports DPO and FUA
Mar 12 13:50:42 ca8 kernel: [ 3.817396] sd 0:2:0:0: [sda] 246091776 512-byte hardware sectors (125999 MB)
Mar 12 13:50:42 ca8 kernel: [ 3.817396] sd 0:2:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
Mar 12 13:50:42 ca8 kernel: [ 3.817396] sd 0:2:0:0: [sda] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, supports DPO and FUA
Mar 12 13:50:42 ca8 kernel: [ 3.817396] sda: sda1
Mar 12 13:50:42 ca8 kernel: [ 3.817396] sd 0:2:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
And the sda device is, in my case, the RAID device.
Then, make partitions on sda and you mount this device into your system.
March 13, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Thanks, now works perfectly !
i have created RAID 10
i have 4 HDD , every HDD 1 TB = Totaly 4 TB
RAID 10 = 2 HDD MIRROR OF 2 HDD.
Total: 2 TB of space.
For mail server and file server.
Big thanks for your help.
p.s. Don’t like the sound every 2 sec when raid controller rebuilding hard disk. ))
March 19, 2009 at 2:34 pm
How did you monitor raid status ?
I have soft: ./CmdTool2 -AdpAllInfo -aALL
but don’t know how to display RAID 10 Array status,
I need some info like: Status = OK, or One drive failed, or rebuilding, or need to be replaced etc.
March 20, 2009 at 1:48 am
Sorry, my system was experimentally builded. I did not need to have such monitoring tool. I have totally no idea about such tool.
March 9, 2009 at 3:42 pm
So you saying that: Linux kernel, latest versions, have built in driver for this raid controller ? “Intel RAID SRCSATAWB”
And the name of the driver is: LSI Logic*
Right ?
I just wanna to know, does this raid controller has a driver for linux.
(Not redhat etc)
Just for example: Slackware
March 10, 2009 at 12:56 am
When I used Linux kernel 2.6.25, Intel RAID storage works without adding additional device drivers for it.