[TriLUG] B320i RAID controller driver

Fri May 22 12:45:18 EDT 2020

I agree with Joseph. I'm no expert, but I think Linux software RAID is the
way to go.

My "new" server (which I assembled last year) has three 2TB drives (mixed
brands), in doubly-mirrored RAID 1 setup, using the motherboard's SATA
controller, running Centos 7, on a surplus computer (which used to be a
Win7 machine).

Because there's no special RAID controller, if I need to move the drives to
a different machine, that's no problem.

Because it's software RAID, there's no problem mixing brands & models of
drives.

Because I mixed brands / models of drives, the chance of multiple drives
failing at the same time is very tiny. That's an underappreciated advantage
of software RAID over hardware RAID. Hardware RAID setups typically require
identical drives, which are subjected to near-identical usage patterns,
which often causes them to fail on the same day, accompanied by the sound
of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Because I'm running mirrored drives, I felt safe using used drives, and
those 2 TB SATA drives only cost me $20 to $25 each on eBay. (YMMV -- they
seem to be slightly higher than that, today
<https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_dcat=56083&LH_TitleDesc=0&_fsrp=1&Interface=SATA%2520I%7CSATA%2520II%7CSATA%2520III&Storage%2520Capacity=2TB&_nkw=-board&_sacat=56083&_from=R40&LH_BIN=1&rt=nc&LH_ItemCondition=1000%7C1500%7C2000%7C2500%7C3000>.)
So my system cost a pittance.

Like you, I don't need so much storage, but having lots of extra storage
gives me the freedom to build new servers in KVM virtual machines, back
up virtual machines before changing things, etc. I'm not been doing
that, yet, but when I someday go to Centos 8, it will be with greatly
reduced risk of "putting the system in a messed up state."

A nice fringe benefit of running mirrored drives in a software RAID array
is a *big* performance boost. Linux is smart enough to spread reads across
all your mirrored drives. It simultaneously reads from all drives, so the
more mirrored drives you have, the faster it goes. I haven't benchmarked
varying numbers of drives on my current server, but having two drives
reduced the boot time by slightly *more* than 50% on an earlier machine
(which was using slow 2.5" HDDs).

BTW, you said you have four 300 GB drives in a RAID 1+0 array, giving you
300 GB of usable storage. But RAID 1+0 should only cost you 50% of the
total space, not 75%, so my guess is that if you look at the drives you'll
find that they're only 150 GB each.

Dave

On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 11:19 AM Matt Flyer via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org>
wrote:

> I have an HP Proliant server that has a B320i RAID controller in it.
> There are four 300 GB SATA disks configured as a 1+0 ARRAY that
> logically looks like one 300GB disk, which is more than enough storage
> capacity for what I use.
>
> I have been using Centos 7 on it, which is as integrated with Python
> 2.7 as M$ Windows (is) was with Internet Explorer. As it is getting
> long in the tooth, I am having severe trouble getting the packages
> needed to run current versions of Rails and I have decided to throw in
> the towel on Centos 7.
>
> I tried running an online 'update' to Centos 8 and it failed on a
> number of packages, mostly Python I believe, so I tried to restored my
> backup and decided to punt, and put the system in a messed up state. At
> this point - a wipe and install of something more modern is the path
> forward.
>
> The problem I am running into is that the driver for the B320i is
> proprietary and it looks like HP has built drivers for every damned
> raid controller, including really old ones, EXCEPT the B320i.  I do not
> see a driver for for this controller for either Red Hat 8 / Centos 8 or
> Open Suse 15, which I would be willing to try.
>
> What's odd is that if you do an LSMOD and search for the B320i driver,
> which is listed on HP's site as "ksmod-hpvsa" this does not appear
> anywhere in the list.  Rather AHCI does, and LSPCI shows that it's
> using AHCI as a standard SATA controller. So I am not sure where this
> driver embeds itself past install or why it can't see the disks at
> install.
>
> Rather you go through a convoluted install process, where you interrupt
> the standard install, run "linux dd" and then are supposed to load a
> driver that you get as an ISO from HP (that doesn't exist for RH 8 or
> Suse 15).
>
> It is looking like my only viable path forward is to disable the
> hardware RAID controller and let the OS have the disks directly.  I
> suppose I could use MDADM to create a software array, but this isn't
> without it's own issues and additional maintenance.
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas?  I don't get why they would
> fail to provide the driver for this controller but do so for all the
> others. Perhaps I can put a different raid controller in there that is
> supported?
>
> --
> This message was sent to: Dave Burton <ncdave4life at gmail.com>
> To unsubscribe, send a blank message to trilug-leave at trilug.org from that
> address.
> TriLUG mailing list : https://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> Unsubscribe or edit options on the web  :
> https://www.trilug.org/mailman/options/trilug/ncdave4life%40gmail.com
> Welcome to TriLUG: https://trilug.org/welcome