Smart Array 6i and FreeBSD 6.1

[Kai Gallasch]

Hi List.

I am newbie when it comes to HP Proliant servers and just recently got
one DL385 Dual(DC) Opteron in my hands, which will replace a dual Xeon
2.4 Server.. The DL385 hardware makes a very good impression to me.
Looks very high quality. Every component just snaps into place and you
don't need any tools to server parts, nice!

Maybe you can help me with some questions?

userland software for the smart array 6i:

I heard that there is a userland binary for the smart array 6i available
from HP which is said to work with FreeBSD (Linux emulation).
Where do I find this Linux package? (RPM?) I searched HP but cannot find
 the stuff.

What Linux port is needed for the raidcontroller software,
emulators/linux_base or emulators/linux_base-8 ?


environmental monitoring:

It seems that the mbmon port does not work with the DL385 hardware. How
can I monitor the server/cpu temperature of the server in a 100% FreeBSD
environment? Is there a way to make snmp queries to the ilo Interface
and use an snmp oid that gives back temperature an fanhealth values?

"raid5-angst" - opinions:

Although not directly FreeBSD related, maybe you can give some advice on
the following..

I have some fellow admins who suffer from what I call "raid5-angst" :-)
When I installed the server recently and decided to go with raid5
(previously we only had raid 0+1) they at once come up with stories of
"this guy" whose raid5 crashed - even with a hotspare drive - because
during the rebuild that took "very long" another physical drive died..
now how probable is that?!

what's your opinion on that? I think they got some point when they claim
"when you bring your raid in production you buy several hard drives that
almost always have similar serial nombers. So when one drive fails you,
chances are high that a very similar disk will break down also.."

Well, the smart array 6i doesn't offer Raid 6 / ADG - this would be
safer, but I think a hot spare physical drive must be sufficient. (BTW:
Anyone know if a hot spare drive is spinning, while it's waiting for
another drive to fail? - just nosy..)

Any help appreciated,
Kai.

-- 

 "That's a huge mistake, and anybody that does it that way (FreeBSD)
 is totally incompetent" und "I claim that Mach people (and apparently
 FreeBSD) are incompetent idiots"
    Linus Torvalds - "Inventor" of operating system Linux