[plug] IBM ServeRAID (was: Help request)

[Ryan]

On Wed, 2004-03-10 at 06:12, Denis Brown wrote:
> > I use my 2.2r6 Potato CD for IBM ServerRAID installs - works like a
> > bought one.  I forget what kernel is on that CD, but all the kernels on
> > the Woody ones ignore the ServerRAID controller.
> >
> > Did you perchance try such a CD?
> >
> No siree!   Did not know such a thing existed, but even if I had found
> one, I would have (incorrectly) assumed that such fancy things as
> ServeRAID controllers would not have featured back in Potato days :-(
> 
> Just goes to show the value of this list...   I'll grab and burn a copy of
> the 2.2r6 in case it gets me out of sticky situations in future.   Thanks
> for the info.

I can make you a copy of mine if you can't (be bothered) track(ing) it
down.

More info for you about these.  I have several IBM PC Server 330s thanks
to eBay.  6 Tray hot-swap HDD cage, Dual PII and the obvious ServeRAID
card.  These machines were released in 1997 and cost somewhere between
US$15-20K - about AU$500 now with HDDs :)  Fantastic machines when you
have no money, just a bit noisy - one of mine is named 'wind-tunnel' for
this reason.

It has an integrated ServeRAID II card in it, your one probably has a 6M
or 6i?

ryan at wind-tunnel:~$ lspci | grep ServeRAID
01:03.0 SCSI storage controller: IBM ServeRAID Controller (rev 03)

To give you some idea of how backward compatible these cards and their
firmware are, you can go and pluck any new xSeries IBM off the shelf
with a ServerRAID card and its firmware will seemlessly upload onto the
PC 330s - at least 6 years their former.  I recently downloaded FW:6.11
(probably the same release of the ServeRAID CD image you downloaded) and
thought I'd have no chance of it still working.  To my great surprise
I'm now running 6.11 

Therefore, ancient kernels work with the new cards.  There might be the
odd new feature they don't support, but they get it working.

I also make extensive use of the ipssend utility which you can butcher
out of the RMPs they offer for the ServeRAID manager (or ask me for
it).  I also made some dodgy scripts that ran via cron to check the
state of the drives in the array using ipssend (ask me for them if
interested).

For others that ever need it, the ServeRAID software can all be found
here:

http://www-306.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-495PES.html

Nice list of ServeRAID cards here:

http://publib-b.boulder.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/9445fa5b416f6e32852569ae006bb65f/7fd7d9ec35cf931885256c39006c1732?OpenDocument

Picture of one of mine here:

http://gallery.slowest.net/albums/slowest-net-rebuild/Picture_0119.sized.jpg

My favourite thing is the CPU activity lights.  When you boot a non SMP
kernel, only one light comes on.  If you boot an SMP kernel, they both
come on ... we'll I thought it was cool :P

You'd hardly realise I like these things would you? :)

Ryan