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Windows XP Driver for Compaq 64 Bit Fibre Channel Adapter



 
 
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  #21  
Old January 2nd 06, 05:45 AM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.compaq.servers
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Posts: n/a
Default Windows XP Driver for Compaq 64 Bit Fibre Channel Adapter

I'm sorry for taking so long to reply. I am afraid I made rather merry
this New Years.

I had an identical 1600 sitting on the bench beside the first one (that
I mentioned in the prvious post), and I switched a drive from the first
system to the scond system (which had an identical RAID arrangement)
and the new system assimilated to the established OS installed on the
disk that I inserted. I think this corresponds to the experiment that
Will suggested. The results: Compaq Hardware RAID works exactly as any
of us could possibly hope. The new (completely seperate and
unconnected) system BECAME the old system after about two and a half
minutes of disk activity.

If Will is suggesting a strange redundancy between uncompaible systems,
then he may have a point... but as far as Compaq Hardware Raid is
concerned, everything WORKS as it has been advertised to work...at
least according to my bench tests.

  #22  
Old January 2nd 06, 06:04 AM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.compaq.servers
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Windows XP Driver for Compaq 64 Bit Fibre Channel Adapter

What I have done probably six times in a production environment to recover
in the software RAID scenario (using RAID 1) is the procedure I already
spelled out below.

I remove the dead drive, swap in the mirror as its replacement, and reboot
and then rebuild a new mirror.

--
Will

"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote in message
...
what i mean is this: with software raid, you basically have 1 boot drive.
The big hint I am going to give you here is this: ARC Path. If the "boot"
drive in a software mirror goes bad ... what are you going to do to boot
your system using the other disk (the partner in the mirror)?

The following constraints apply:

no re-install media
only 1 computer at hand (the one with the failed disk)


- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
I guess I don't understand your question. What do you mean by *primary*
here?

When I configure a boot volume as RAID 1 using Windows software RAID,
either
of those two volumes is bootable. When I lose the primary in SCSI

ID=0,
I
simply place the drive that was in SCSI ID=1 into the ID=0 slot and

reboot
the system. Windows announces that it sees new devices (actually it

just
sees movement in position of a device), and it asks to reboot. After
rebooting, the mirrored drive is now your boot device.

To fully recover, you get into Device Manager in Windows, and remove the
mirror on the now-missing defective drive. You then insert a new

device,
rescan to acquire it, mark it as dynamic, and then mirror to it.

I've done the above sequence many, many times, and it is infinitely

easier
than any hardware RAID I have used (and allows for more powerful modes

of
recovery because you can work on a device from a different computer

before
reinserting it to reboot from it).

--
Will



  #23  
Old January 2nd 06, 06:07 AM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.compaq.servers
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Windows XP Driver for Compaq 64 Bit Fibre Channel Adapter

No, that is cheating. You can't guarantee that every server in your
environment will be identical, and that it will have identical RAID
hardware. The beauty of the software RAID approach is that you can take
the device to any computer with any hardware and do whatever you need to do.

We have Dell and Compaq 1U, 2U, and 4U intermixed in our environment, not to
mention workstations from both vendors, and I like being able to take any
drive from any of those systems and inspect them across the whole
environment.

--
Will

"Jeffrey Alsip" wrote in message
oups.com...
I'm sorry for taking so long to reply. I am afraid I made rather merry
this New Years.

I had an identical 1600 sitting on the bench beside the first one (that
I mentioned in the prvious post), and I switched a drive from the first
system to the scond system (which had an identical RAID arrangement)
and the new system assimilated to the established OS installed on the
disk that I inserted. I think this corresponds to the experiment that
Will suggested. The results: Compaq Hardware RAID works exactly as any
of us could possibly hope. The new (completely seperate and
unconnected) system BECAME the old system after about two and a half
minutes of disk activity.

If Will is suggesting a strange redundancy between uncompaible systems,
then he may have a point... but as far as Compaq Hardware Raid is
concerned, everything WORKS as it has been advertised to work...at
least according to my bench tests.



  #24  
Old January 2nd 06, 06:30 AM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.compaq.servers
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Windows XP Driver for Compaq 64 Bit Fibre Channel Adapter

I'm sorry, but you are not defining premises and I don't think you can reach
any valid conclusions without doing that first.

First, I don't think you understand the problem I am trying to explain.
Let's say you install software (e.g., a Windows Update) that prevents that
computer from booting. It does happen on rare occasion, and when it does
the beauty of the software RAID mirror is that you can remove that boot
device and insert it to *any* hardware. It's very fast at that point to
run a software restore. It's a critical requirement for us that I not have
to duplicate exactly the hardware RAID configuration on some new machine
just so I can inspect the drive that was in the old machine. Once the
drive is mounted on another computer, you can restore from backups, or do
other steps to manually recover the system from backups you may already have
on disk. Hardware RAID offers no protection at all from this kind of
software-related configuration failure. It does however make it very hard
to recover unles you have some kind of Disaster Recovery configuration disk
at hand. You can do a parallel OS install of course, but all of that
takes time to do, time to configure, and time to maintain. Been there done
that and it works but just costs too much time.

Second, your trying to make a point based on my saying I do something
"frequently" is just taking a cheap shot. If I maintain 70 computers and 2%
of them have a software-related issue that prevents them from booting, that
means once or twice each year I'll need to recover those systems. That's
frequent but inconsequential as a percentage of the total time taken to
administer the systems. In reality, over seven years, I have had to
recover maybe 12 machines whose software configurations had problems, and
I've certainly had plenty of those be hardware RAID. Hardware RAID has
always always made my life more difficult, not easier.

Where hardware RAID is an essential element is for large RAID 5
configurations. But I never use it for the boot device because it just
doesn't assist with recovery once the OS becomes corrupted and you cannot
boot.

If I were running a mission critical database for eBay, or even something
with a modest cost in the many thousands of dollars per hour for downtime,
then probably I would use hardware RAID for the boot volume, but I would
also have a backup server ready to take over from the primary, and I would
have plenty of change control in place so that if a software install brings
down a system the replacement is there in the ready to take over. All of
those steps are time consuming, and the applications we maintain might cost
about $1000/hour for downtime. Since in every case to date we have been
able to recover a software mirrored boot device within 10 to 20 minutes, the
reward to risk ratio has been reasonable. In every case where I have had a
hardware RAID mirror fail the boot device and not had an identical -
unused - server with identical RAID hardware available, the recovery has
taken more than three hours.

I'm not trying to be difficult about this. I used to believe that hardware
RAID was the only way to go as well. But after seven years of working with
them I'm simply interested in minimizing the organization's costs. They
have their place for data and application volumes, but for us the boot
device isn't the right place for hardware RAID, in a small company.

--
Will


"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote in message
...
software raid often necessitates that, so dont use it. It is the way of

the
amateur. I have never had raid volume corruption on a RAID1 volume

(harware
raid) and I have used the following controllers:

Mylex
AMI
Dell PERC
HP NetRAID
IBM ServeRAID
Adaptec
and Compaq Smart Array (as far back as the IDA and IDA II models).

I have to site your approach to raid as being serious flawed. Especially

if
you find yourself "frequently" haveing to swap drives between systems to

get
data from them. I dont fully understand what you are doing, but it just
doesnt sound right.


"Will" wrote in message
...
The problem I have with hardware RAID is that quite often to recover a
system I need to remove the drive, mount it on a different computer, and
then work with its file system. Hardware RAID makes that next to
impossible to do easily.

--
Will

"Nut Cracker" wrote in message
...
interesting ... i would still prefer a hardware based solution. Just

out
of
curiosity, if your primary drive were to fail under the mirror, do you

know
what you would need to do to boot the system again ?

- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
I found the article that talks about how to make RAID-5 on Windows XP

work,
and I assume once you did that tweak you would be able to do

mirroring
as
well.



http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/...pen/index.html

--
Will

"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote in message
...
Yes, I know. I posted that to illustrate that you cant do it on XP.
The
workstation products used to be able to do simple stripes and

mirrors.
im
rather suprised they dropped the support for it. In the meanwhile,

use
a
hardware based RAID controller. Hardware is always better than

software,
in
my opinion.

I wipped out my googfing and went to work. I didnt find anything,

and
i
doubt it would be a simple as a registry tweak.

- LC










  #25  
Old January 2nd 06, 07:58 AM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.compaq.servers
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Windows XP Driver for Compaq 64 Bit Fibre Channel Adapter

anyone that thinks they can take a compaq raid volume and move it to an IBM
or Dell array controller (or any other interoperable scenario) and have it
work should have thier head checked. I really hope that isnt what I think I
am hearing the OP complain about.

- LC

"Jeffrey Alsip" wrote in message
oups.com...
I'm sorry for taking so long to reply. I am afraid I made rather merry
this New Years.

I had an identical 1600 sitting on the bench beside the first one (that
I mentioned in the prvious post), and I switched a drive from the first
system to the scond system (which had an identical RAID arrangement)
and the new system assimilated to the established OS installed on the
disk that I inserted. I think this corresponds to the experiment that
Will suggested. The results: Compaq Hardware RAID works exactly as any
of us could possibly hope. The new (completely seperate and
unconnected) system BECAME the old system after about two and a half
minutes of disk activity.

If Will is suggesting a strange redundancy between uncompaible systems,
then he may have a point... but as far as Compaq Hardware Raid is
concerned, everything WORKS as it has been advertised to work...at
least according to my bench tests.



  #26  
Old January 2nd 06, 08:01 AM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.compaq.servers
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Windows XP Driver for Compaq 64 Bit Fibre Channel Adapter

you still havent answered the question, which is a very basic one at that.

with only 1 system, if you lose your boot drive in a software mirror set,
what do you need to do to get the system to boot from the other drive?

you reputation as a contributor here is on the line, Will. Just answer the
question.

- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
No, that is cheating. You can't guarantee that every server in your
environment will be identical, and that it will have identical RAID
hardware. The beauty of the software RAID approach is that you can take
the device to any computer with any hardware and do whatever you need to
do.

We have Dell and Compaq 1U, 2U, and 4U intermixed in our environment, not
to
mention workstations from both vendors, and I like being able to take any
drive from any of those systems and inspect them across the whole
environment.

--
Will

"Jeffrey Alsip" wrote in message
oups.com...
I'm sorry for taking so long to reply. I am afraid I made rather merry
this New Years.

I had an identical 1600 sitting on the bench beside the first one (that
I mentioned in the prvious post), and I switched a drive from the first
system to the scond system (which had an identical RAID arrangement)
and the new system assimilated to the established OS installed on the
disk that I inserted. I think this corresponds to the experiment that
Will suggested. The results: Compaq Hardware RAID works exactly as any
of us could possibly hope. The new (completely seperate and
unconnected) system BECAME the old system after about two and a half
minutes of disk activity.

If Will is suggesting a strange redundancy between uncompaible systems,
then he may have a point... but as far as Compaq Hardware Raid is
concerned, everything WORKS as it has been advertised to work...at
least according to my bench tests.





  #27  
Old January 2nd 06, 09:24 AM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.compaq.servers
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Windows XP Driver for Compaq 64 Bit Fibre Channel Adapter

You keep making my points for me and then trying to make them arguments
against me. I don't think you get it at all.

I don't expect drives from a Compaq hardware RAID to work in IBM or Dell
hardware RAID. That's one reason why we prefer software mirrors for boot
volumes. Because we the software mirror we can move the drive across
different vendor's hardware without any issue, and work on the drive to make
it bootable again.

--
Will


"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote in message
...
anyone that thinks they can take a compaq raid volume and move it to an

IBM
or Dell array controller (or any other interoperable scenario) and have it
work should have thier head checked. I really hope that isnt what I think

I
am hearing the OP complain about.

- LC

"Jeffrey Alsip" wrote in message
oups.com...
I'm sorry for taking so long to reply. I am afraid I made rather merry
this New Years.

I had an identical 1600 sitting on the bench beside the first one (that
I mentioned in the prvious post), and I switched a drive from the first
system to the scond system (which had an identical RAID arrangement)
and the new system assimilated to the established OS installed on the
disk that I inserted. I think this corresponds to the experiment that
Will suggested. The results: Compaq Hardware RAID works exactly as any
of us could possibly hope. The new (completely seperate and
unconnected) system BECAME the old system after about two and a half
minutes of disk activity.

If Will is suggesting a strange redundancy between uncompaible systems,
then he may have a point... but as far as Compaq Hardware Raid is
concerned, everything WORKS as it has been advertised to work...at
least according to my bench tests.





  #28  
Old January 2nd 06, 09:28 AM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.compaq.servers
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Windows XP Driver for Compaq 64 Bit Fibre Channel Adapter

I think I have answered this question now three times. I don't understand
why it is you don't see the response as a response.

If I loose the boot device in a Windows 200x software mirror, I perform
steps similar to the following:

1) I remove the dead drive.

2) I take the mirrored drive from the SCSI ID=1 position and move it to the
SCSI ID=0 position.

3) I boot the system. The system will claim to have found new devices on
login, and I reboot again. From this point on everything else is cleanup
work.

4) I start Disk Manager and I remove the mirror from the missing drive.

5) I remove the missing drive from the configuration entirely.

6) I insert a new drive and make it Dynamic.

7) I mirror to it.

--
Will

"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote in message
t...
you still havent answered the question, which is a very basic one at that.

with only 1 system, if you lose your boot drive in a software mirror set,
what do you need to do to get the system to boot from the other drive?

you reputation as a contributor here is on the line, Will. Just answer the
question.

- LC



 




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