Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller
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@scottalanmiller said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
@DustinB3403 said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
Okay so one last question, is there any logging I could enable which would help to troubleshoot this should this issue occur again?
No, unexpected outages, by definitely, are unloggable without an ILO. That's what the unexpected designates.
Yeah I was just hopping I could setup some kind of remote logging to capture anything from the system.
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@DustinB3403 said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
As far as I can tell this is all software RAID so I can't even query the controller for drive health.
Well, you don't need to query the controller because there is none. One less failure point
Query the drives.
On a linux system you'd often see read/write errors in the system log if you have a drive that is failing.
You can run smart tests on the drives as well.
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Rhetorical question @Pete-S how would I get to look past the RAID controller? I'm presented with only the one disk from
wmicand Intel Rapid Storage isn't showing any other issues either.*Edit IRS is showing both drives in good condition.
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@DustinB3403 said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
Rhetorical question @Pete-S how would I get to look past the RAID controller? I'm presented with only the one disk from
wmicand Intel Rapid Storage isn't showing any other issues either.*Edit IRS is showing both drives in good condition.
Ah, in my memory I thought you had access to the drives individually. Well, sorry I couldn't be of help.
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@Pete-S said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
@DustinB3403 said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
Rhetorical question @Pete-S how would I get to look past the RAID controller? I'm presented with only the one disk from
wmicand Intel Rapid Storage isn't showing any other issues either.*Edit IRS is showing both drives in good condition.
Ah, in my memory I thought you had access to the drives individually. Well, sorry I couldn't be of help.
No worries, if there was some magic I could use I'd be happy to use it.
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@DustinB3403 said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
@Pete-S said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
@DustinB3403 said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
Rhetorical question @Pete-S how would I get to look past the RAID controller? I'm presented with only the one disk from
wmicand Intel Rapid Storage isn't showing any other issues either.*Edit IRS is showing both drives in good condition.
Ah, in my memory I thought you had access to the drives individually. Well, sorry I couldn't be of help.
No worries, if there was some magic I could use I'd be happy to use it.
Not sure if this would work or if it only works on actual controllers.
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@syko24 Just checked, this only works with hardware controllers. When using Intel's FakeRAID the log file reports "No Controller Found"
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I thought fake RAID still had to be done inside the OS, does it not?
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@Dashrender said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
I thought fake RAID still had to be done inside the OS, does it not?
It does, that's what makes it fake.
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@DustinB3403 said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
@Dashrender said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
I thought fake RAID still had to be done inside the OS, does it not?
It does, that's what makes it fake.
Then I'm confused how you can't find anything about it or the drives attached to it.
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@Dashrender said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
@DustinB3403 said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
@Dashrender said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
I thought fake RAID still had to be done inside the OS, does it not?
It does, that's what makes it fake.
Then I'm confused how you can't find anything about it or the drives attached to it.
The OS is fooled into believe it's running an R1, how would I see through this layer when I'm on the OS. I'd have to reboot the system to get any real details from the underlying hardware.
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Think about the question you've asked @Dashrender, in order to get details from the drives in an Array, you'd have to go to the RAID controller (Hardware level).
Since this is FakeRAID, there is no hardware level, it's all software, presented from within Windows. So I'm limited to only the tools that the FakeRAID offers.
I could theoretically reboot the host and get into BIOS to maybe pull some details from that (assuming any tooling exists) but that's an IF.
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@Dashrender said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
@DustinB3403 said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
@Dashrender said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
I thought fake RAID still had to be done inside the OS, does it not?
It does, that's what makes it fake.
Then I'm confused how you can't find anything about it or the drives attached to it.
There's a hardware shim to make the FakeRAID look real.
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@DustinB3403 said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
Think about the question you've asked @Dashrender, in order to get details from the drives in an Array, you'd have to go to the RAID controller (Hardware level).
Since this is FakeRAID, there is no hardware level, it's all software, presented from within Windows. So I'm limited to only the tools that the FakeRAID offers.
I could theoretically reboot the host and get into BIOS to maybe pull some details from that (assuming any tooling exists) but that's an IF.
What may help in the description....
A SATA (or SAS) controller is always hardware, it has to be it is what holds the physical plugs. There's always a hardware controller. RAID can be built into that controller (making it a RAID controller) or done in software elsewhere (or even put in hardware elsewhere.)
In this case, the hardware controller handles an abstraction so that you can't see the drives, but it doesn't do RAID. The RAID is all in software, but it's a nasty controller that blocks you from SMART data on the drives to make it look like a RAID controller.
Intel drive controllers are the absolute worst.
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I haven't dealt with it in so long, I thought I recalled a way to see the drives when last I dealt with it, besides just in the BIOS
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@Dashrender said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
I haven't dealt with it in so long, I thought I recalled a way to see the drives when last I dealt with it, besides just in the BIOS
I think if you turn the mode off.
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Storage Spaces is probably what is hiding the drives from the rest of the system. That's how my personal computer I have running storage spaces works at least.
The only reason I have storage spaces running is so I can pipe in about how it works. So terrible, no insight into anything. Even fakeraid at least lets you get drive status and smartctl stats.
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@travisdh1 said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
Storage Spaces is probably what is hiding the drives from the rest of the system. That's how my personal computer I have running storage spaces works at least.
The only reason I have storage spaces running is so I can pipe in about how it works. So terrible, no insight into anything. Even fakeraid at least lets you get drive status and smartctl stats.
Yeah, there are 2 raid platforms listed on this system so it could be SS or Intel's crap.
So there isn't much I can do, besides drum up a possible project out of it to rebuild the server with a proper raid controller for this use case to get details so the customer isn't grumpy.
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@DustinB3403 said in Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller:
Yeah, there are 2 raid platforms listed on this system so it could be SS or Intel's crap.
SS is real software RAID, no FakeRAID. If you have SS, it'll always show the SMART data.
Now, someone might have done SS on TOP of FakeRAID and really, really screwed things up!
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Neither of the listed options are production level RAID. But one is real software and the other is FakeRAID. SS is definitely the better of the two, but it's still nascent and considered not safe enough to be considered for production storage by normal standards.
