smithyandco Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 Ok... the mrs has managed to get me an IBM Server (eServer X Series 225 mainly original spec other than memory upgraded to 2gb from 512mb... Doesn't seem too bad for what I want... 2.80GHz Xeon 64Bit (Dual CPU board... could get another 2.80 Xeon on eBay), 2GB ram, 3x36.5Gb hdd).I'm only wanting to set this up for experiments etc... But.... ...I've never dealt with RAID before... Or Ultra320 SCSI RAID to be exact... I have 3 x 36.4Gb 10,000RPM drives on their caddies and sitting in slots 0, 1 and 2 (3, 4 and 5 empty with blanking plates) I've tried running ServerGuide by IBM and using the RAID config software that comes with... (Options being RAID 0, 2E and 5)First of all I have no idea which RAID config would be best (Idealy... I'd like a way of keeping one drive for permanent backups... From what I know RAID 5 would be best but like I said... I have no idea!) I've tested with 5 already assuming I'd be left with one logical drive which to Windows would act like one physical drive. ServerGuide gives options on what NOS your going to use (The copy in question mainly supports Server 2000 and 2003 64/32) I know during Windows setup I'm required to load the SCSI/RAID drivers (Press F6, Wait, Press 'S' select the driver you've placed on a floppy, Enter, Wait, Continue with setup as normal)I've done this and when it comes to the setup menu you get the normal options... Enter to install etc....After you press Enter I get... "No Mass Storage devices could be found.... Please make sure they are connected and powered on... blah, blah, blah... Press F3 to restart the PC" Where have I gone wrong? The RAID bios shows all three drives as "OK"... ServerGuide shows all the drives as "OK" and shows their capacity... so I'm guessing it's not a hardware fault here... Probably more user fault! Am I best reformatting the array using a bootable tool like gparted? I'd assume Windows would just see 1 logical drive with "unallocated space" and ask to format in the required filesystem as you would with an IDE or non-RAID sata drive.... I know not a lot of you are going to make sense of what's above but I know there are some server boffins on here!And "playing" with hardware like this is the only way I really learn! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gadge Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 Are you certain the raid controller drivers are correct? and you have the pins on the hard drives set correctly for whichever raid configuration your going to use? (I assume RAID 0+1?) Out of interest what you going to do with it and why are you installing XP? Wouldn't you be better Installing Server 2003 or 08 (I think 03 may have problems with Vista, or we are having problems with it at least when it comes to our DSLAM project). does it also have Press GigaRAID in the bios? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smithyandco Posted February 10, 2009 Author Share Posted February 10, 2009 Are you certain the raid controller drivers are correct? and you have the pins on the hard drives set correctly for whichever raid configuration your going to use? (I assume RAID 0+1?) Out of interest what you going to do with it and why are you installing XP? Wouldn't you be better Installing Server 2003 or 08 (I think 03 may have problems with Vista, or we are having problems with it at least when it comes to our DSLAM project). does it also have Press GigaRAID in the bios?The drivers are correct!... From the IBM website under X Series 225... I have no idea on pins... It's SCSI Ultra320 (Other SCSI drives I have in another server have jumpers, SCSI and power... these are just SCSI with a SCSI board for them to slot onto... There is some pins on underneath the drives but I'm not 100% sure what to do with them... as far as I was aware they are left blank) I've tried with 2000 Advanced Server, 2003 64 and 32, 2000 Pro and XP Pro (2000 and XP was attempted to just see if it was me using the 2000/2003 Server discs wrong)... None of them find a storage device.... I don't have 2008... ServerGuide comes back saying the drives are setup correctly though... ServeRAID-6i.... It's going to be used to experiment with different setups, Server OSs etc... I have very limited experience with servers (Apart from pre-historic things...) so it's basically a learning tool... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hezz Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 you either need the CORRECT driver at the f6 prompt or have you tried going into the settings as it boots and check there? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 I've tried running ServerGuide by IBM and using the RAID config software that comes with... (Options being RAID 0, 2E and 5)First of all I have no idea which RAID config would be best (Idealy... I'd like a way of keeping one drive for permanent backups... From what I know RAID 5 would be best but like I said... I have no idea!)RAID 5 would give you redundancy, although you'd lose 1/3 the capacity of your physical disk space aggregate. I've tested with 5 already assuming I'd be left with one logical drive which to Windows would act like one physical drive.You can create multiple logical disks as long as there is unallocated space available (at the raid level). Eg, you could create a 10GB RAID 5 logical disk that uses the 3 disks you've got and then whatever you want with the remaining space. I'd recommend creating a single RAID 5 volume that uses all the disks in full. I know during Windows setup I'm required to load the SCSI/RAID drivers (Press F6, Wait, Press 'S' select the driver you've placed on a floppy, Enter, Wait, Continue with setup as normal)I've done this and when it comes to the setup menu you get the normal options... Enter to install etc....After you press Enter I get... "No Mass Storage devices could be found.... Please make sure they are connected and powered on... blah, blah, blah... Press F3 to restart the PC"If you have created a valid raid 5 volume above, and you've put the right driver disk in and chosen the controller after hitting F6, then it should show up in the list. Am I best reformatting the array using a bootable tool like gparted? I'd assume Windows would just see 1 logical drive with "unallocated space" and ask to format in the required filesystem as you would with an IDE or non-RAID sata drive....No. Forget that junk. Yes Windows will see it as a physical disk (the logical one you created). You can then partition it as you like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eetaylog Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 I know during Windows setup I'm required to load the SCSI/RAID drivers (Press F6, Wait, Press 'S' select the driver you've placed on a floppy, Enter, Wait, Continue with setup as normal)I've done this and when it comes to the setup menu you get the normal options... Enter to install etc....After you press Enter I get... "No Mass Storage devices could be found.... Please make sure they are connected and powered on... blah, blah, blah... Press F3 to restart the PC" Where have I gone wrong? i think you need to go into disk manager (control panel -> admin tools -> computer management -> disk management) and enable the RAID volume. It should be in the list of drives, just right click and enable it. i had a similar problem when setting mine up and this fixed it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 eetaylog- No, that's not it. He's trying to install Windows! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eetaylog Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 eetaylog- No, that's not it. He's trying to install Windows! right i see now. hes tring to create a raid array first and then install windows on it in a seperate partition? if thats the case ive always found it very messy to have a boot partition on a raid set, why dont you run a smaller boot volume on a seperate sata drive (~80Gb), and use the raid set as purely storage? or are you just doing it to see if its possible? oh, and just to add another few pennies... youll sacrifice write speed if you use RAID5, so with the cost of Tb drives being so low these days, why not use a RAID1 mirror setup? (unless youre dealing mainly with write-once data, in which case the loss of speed wont matter too much) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 I don't think he's really worried about performance going by his first post. I agree, it's nice to have the system volume on a seperate array. My home server has a 4 disk raid 5 array for the shiznits and a two disk mirror for the boot volume. And here it is... http://di.cx/gallery/d/17976-2/mini-me%20004.JPG And it's to replace this in my garage!! http://di.cx/gallery/d/17814-2/img0009.jpg Ha ha.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eetaylog Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 haha, nice setup . what made you have a mirror for your boot though? have a look at this guys setup over on mediaportal. absolutely insane amount of storage...hes even connected the lot up to a UPS. http://www.evo-host.co.uk/getimg/18133.jpg http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/ongoing-...316/index3.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 haha, nice setup . what made you have a mirror for your boot though? have a look at this guys setup over on mediaportal. absolutely insane amount of storage...hes even connected the lot up to a UPS. I don't like single points of failure (SPoF's).. Why not have a mirror for the system volume? It's slightly faster and it offers redundancy.. and with 40gb disks, nice and cheap!! That server is a mini-itx box, running a E7200 cpu and 4gb ram (wish it was 8gb, but no space!).. Four 1tb disks internally configured as a single raid 5 volume on the onboard intel matrix controller (uses host cpu for XOR calcs, ~5% cpu usage on the above proc).. Host o/s is win2k8.. It mainly acts as a file server but I also run vmware server 2 to host lots of virtual goodness (i like to segregate everything).. I've got two APC SmartUPS 1400's Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eetaylog Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 haha, nice setup . what made you have a mirror for your boot though? have a look at this guys setup over on mediaportal. absolutely insane amount of storage...hes even connected the lot up to a UPS. I don't like single points of failure (SPoF's).. Why not have a mirror for the system volume? It's slightly faster and it offers redundancy.. and with 40gb disks, nice and cheap!! That server is a mini-itx box, running a E7200 cpu and 4gb ram (wish it was 8gb, but no space!).. Four 1tb disks internally configured as a single raid 5 volume on the onboard intel matrix controller (uses host cpu for XOR calcs, ~5% cpu usage on the above proc).. Host o/s is win2k8.. It mainly acts as a file server but I also run vmware server 2 to host lots of virtual goodness (i like to segregate everything).. I've got two APC SmartUPS 1400's so is your controller software based? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 so is your controller software based? No, it's hardware RAID, it just doesn't have a fancy XOR-offloading processor of it's own to play with. Nor does it have a nice stack of cache to improve performance. However, it's fast enough for me (something like 400MB/sec burst and 200MB/sec sustained read). I'm going minimalist and green! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smithyandco Posted February 11, 2009 Author Share Posted February 11, 2009 I've tried running ServerGuide by IBM and using the RAID config software that comes with... (Options being RAID 0, 2E and 5)First of all I have no idea which RAID config would be best (Idealy... I'd like a way of keeping one drive for permanent backups... From what I know RAID 5 would be best but like I said... I have no idea!)RAID 5 would give you redundancy, although you'd lose 1/3 the capacity of your physical disk space aggregate. I've tested with 5 already assuming I'd be left with one logical drive which to Windows would act like one physical drive.You can create multiple logical disks as long as there is unallocated space available (at the raid level). Eg, you could create a 10GB RAID 5 logical disk that uses the 3 disks you've got and then whatever you want with the remaining space. I'd recommend creating a single RAID 5 volume that uses all the disks in full. I know during Windows setup I'm required to load the SCSI/RAID drivers (Press F6, Wait, Press 'S' select the driver you've placed on a floppy, Enter, Wait, Continue with setup as normal)I've done this and when it comes to the setup menu you get the normal options... Enter to install etc....After you press Enter I get... "No Mass Storage devices could be found.... Please make sure they are connected and powered on... blah, blah, blah... Press F3 to restart the PC"If you have created a valid raid 5 volume above, and you've put the right driver disk in and chosen the controller after hitting F6, then it should show up in the list. Am I best reformatting the array using a bootable tool like gparted? I'd assume Windows would just see 1 logical drive with "unallocated space" and ask to format in the required filesystem as you would with an IDE or non-RAID sata drive....No. Forget that junk. Yes Windows will see it as a physical disk (the logical one you created). You can then partition it as you like.Wow! nice reply! Cheers Urm... I've done the above... I have used the correct drivers but still I have the same problem...The driver I used is this one -> IBM Ultra320 SCSI Adapter for Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 version 2.008 Says it supports xSeries 225 (aka mine...) and supports 2000 (inc server), XP and 2003... I've selected the 2000 driver when attempting to setup 2000Pro/Server, XP/2003 32-bit driver when attempting XP Pro and XP/2003 64-Bit driver when attempting to setup 2003... Firmware is V7.10 (latest I think) I'm going to try a few different versions of ServerGuide to see if it's the version of ServerGuide I have causing issues... As far as I'm aware now... I've done everything correctly... There seems to be no hardware faults... So I'm pretty stuck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted February 11, 2009 Share Posted February 11, 2009 I don't think that's the RAID controller driver Phil. Try here: http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/sup...p;matrix=Y#RAID Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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