Intel RAID controller in Linux
Posted February 26, 2009
on: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"

Thanks, I have ordered this device.


How did you configure the RAID ?
Only with Intel RAID BIOS Console Utility ?
Which distrib of linux do you have ?


How did you “mount” RAID array ? so it can be displayed in: df -h


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. ))


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 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.