Re: monitoring Raid on Debian

[Alvin Oga <aoga@Maggie.Linux-Consulting.com>]

hi ya ross

On Mon, 26 May 2003, Ross Tsolakidis wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I've successfully installed Debian on my Raid 5 system, basically 4 disks running hardware Raid 5.
> Was pretty easy, just installed using the 2nd disk from Debian.
> 
> Anyway my question relates to monitoring the hardware raid.

you're choices are limited .. :-)

your monitoring is strictly dependent on which hw raid card you're
using...  if you're using 3ware ... they provide some monitoring
	if you're using promise ... throw it away ... use software isntead
	if raid monitoring is more important than non-functional hw raid
	from fastrack series

sw raid works best for most apps we played with

sw raid monitoring ... that might also work for some hw raid ... 
	http://www.1U-Raid5.net/Monitoring/

by the time there is a problem with raid... it's too late ... its
broken.... :-)   

monitoring and emailing wont help ...  your users will be screaming
	- dead disk, flaky disk drives,
	- dead fans, dead power supply, dead cpu, ..

best thing you can do is to do proper backup of their data, so 
that corrupted data does not get backed up to overwrite previously
good backups

c ya
alvin
	 
> What application would I use to monitor it ?
> Say a disk failed, at the moment the only way I would know is by looking at the machine and seeing one of the disk lights turned red.
> 
> Is there a common app people use ?
> Something that can email you if there is a problem with the raid ?
>