Solaris 10 X86 - Hardware RAID - SMC/SVM question...

I have gotten back into Sun Solaris System Administration after a five year hiatus... My skills are a little rusty and some of the tools have changed, so here is are my questions...

I have installed Solaris 10 release 1/06 on a Dell 1850 with an attached PowrVault 220v connected to a Perc 4 Di controller. The RAID is configured via BIOS interface to my liking, Solaris is installed and see's all my partitions which I created during install.

For testing purposes, the servers internal disk is used for the OS, the PowerVault is split into 2 RAID's - one is a mirror, one is a stripe...

The question is; do I manage the RAID using Sun Management Console and the tools OR do I use SMC?

When I launch SMC and go into Enhanced Storage... I do not see any RAID's... If I select "Disks" I do see them, but when I select them, it wants to run "FDISK" on them... now this is OK since they are blank but I want to ensure I am not doing sometinhg I should not be concerned with...

If the PERC controller is controlling the RAID, what do I need SMC for?

[1084 byte] By [craig.levalleyy] at [2007-11-26 9:08:19]
# 1

You can use SMC for other purposes but it won't help your with RAID.

Sol 10 1/06 has raidctl which handles LSI1030 and LSI1064 RAID杄nabled controllers (from raidctl(1M)).

Some of the PERCs (most?) are LSI but I don't know if they are chipsets used by your PoweEdge (I doubt it).

Generally you can break it down like this for x86:

If you are using hardware RAID with Solaris 10 x86 you have to use pre-Solaris (i.e. on the RAID controller) managment or hope that the manufacturer of the device has a Solaris managment agent/interface (good luck).

The only exception to this that I know of is the RAID that comes with V20z, V40z, X4100, X4200.

Otherwise you will want to go with SVM or VxVM and manage RAID within Solaris (software RAID).

SMC etc are only going to show you stuff if SVM is involved and VxVM has its own interface, otherwise the disks are controlled by PERC and just hanging out as far as Solaris is concerned.

Hope this helps.

nate_keegan at 2007-7-6 23:24:27 > top of Java-index,Storage Forums,Storage General Discussion...