NoviceNAS Posted September 19, 2017 #1 Posted September 19, 2017 I've been offered one of the above SAS/Raid cards very cheap, and was wondering if they work with Xpenology or not please? If they work, I assume I'm best operating in JBOD and letting the Synology Hybrid Raid take care of configuration as I would with a normal collection of drives? Thanks. Quote
sbv3000 Posted September 19, 2017 #2 Posted September 19, 2017 5.2 would probably work 'out of the box', for 6x you might need the customised extra ramdisk (see polanskimans tutorial) that contains the aacraid module which I think is for most adaptec cards. https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/scsi/aacraid.txt you are correct to set as jbod and let dsm do the shr software raid work Quote
IG-88 Posted September 19, 2017 #3 Posted September 19, 2017 with my driver extension it might work, driver is present in the extended set but i dont think you understood JBOD in the right way it means the controller puts togeter alls disks linear to one big (virtual) disk, dsm would only see one disk with xx TB, ro raid, no shr usualy people (and synology) take "normal" sata controllers with 4 or 8 ports or some special lsi controllers with a IT-Mode Firmware (aka Initiator Target Mode), kind of passtrough mode where you see every single disk that is connected, that way synology dsm can create a software raid aka shr aka mdadm+lvm the driver is proofed by one to work (also the mentioned Adaptec HBA 1000-8i look like the kind of controller that is right for dsm) Quote
NoviceNAS Posted September 20, 2017 Author #4 Posted September 20, 2017 Really helpful replies, thanks all. Quote
NoviceNAS Posted September 23, 2017 Author #5 Posted September 23, 2017 It's fair to say I'm out of my depth here. I've installed the card, and when I view the modules loading on the server I can see that aacraid gets loaded. In Xpenology itself though, there's no sign of the controller, the drives connected to it, or any way of configuring the card. Could some kind soul please point me at the necessary resources to teach myself how to get through this? Thanks. Quote
IG-88 Posted September 23, 2017 #6 Posted September 23, 2017 24 minutes ago, NoviceNAS said: It's fair to say I'm out of my depth here. I've installed the card, and when I view the modules loading on the server I can see that aacraid gets loaded. after loading there should be more to it like showing infoemation about the controllers revision, bios or what ever does it look like this or is there only the message about module loaded? 24 minutes ago, NoviceNAS said: In Xpenology itself though, there's no sign of the controller, the drives connected to it, or any way of configuring the card. Could some kind soul please point me at the necessary resources to teach myself how to get through this? Thanks. dsm is designt to use raw disks like a disk on a simple sata port, raid controllers are designed to present "virtual" raid volumes as one disk (in real containing more drives combined as raid, like one raid volume size 6TB in reality 4 x 2TB drives in raid5 mode dsm is usualy controlling the drives directly, asks for s.m.a.r.t. status and tells you if one drive is expect to die or already dead i know how it looks on hp controllers (like P400/P410) you can create one raid5 volume from all disks and dsm sees only one big disk and uses no raid, jaust basic, you leave everything to the hardware of the controller raid and error detectio, dsm can't see any of this it only a single big disk/drive without status 2nd option is to create a raid drive from every single physical disk (on hp controllers raid0 with one disk) so every disk can be seen (also without status) and in dsm you can create a software raid volume with this virtual single disks, also errer detection falls to the controller and dsm does not know about it, only when not present it will recognise a problem, even differ between those virtual disks can be difficult, on some controllers they look all the same in dsm so if one fails und you dont have a led (original hp hardware with led for status in bay's) it will be hard to tell what drive to change (hopefully the controller bios is helpful) if your controller has any kind if "dump" mode to present disks like they are do it if not create a raid and look if it shows in dsm as already said, dsm is not designed for this type of controller and unsing it this way might bring you in trouble later, i would not recommanded it Quote
NoviceNAS Posted September 23, 2017 Author #7 Posted September 23, 2017 How can I scroll back up to see if there's more info? It goes green and then quickly scrolls up with other modules. I've tried JBOD so far, I'll try other RAID types and report back, thanks. Quote
IG-88 Posted September 23, 2017 #8 Posted September 23, 2017 maybe the driver does not work for this controller, with the stock kernel driver for hp p410 the controller was recognised but size of disks was not detected, lots of things that can go wrong, dsm is a plliance and fiddling with the drivers will nerver be as good as using a actual "real" linux distribution its alway a little tricky thats why its good to use hardware people already tryed with xpenology (new to linux and dsm - keep with hardware you know that works, reading here for some days prevents buying the wrong hardware) you might just try what happens when you use a live linux to boot (like ubuntu or open media vault instead of dsm) Quote
centranex Posted September 23, 2017 #9 Posted September 23, 2017 I can confirm that by using the extra custom ram disk created by @IG-88, I was able to migrate from DSM 5.2 to 6.1.3 with the Adaptec 6405E controller. The only thing that broke for me was all of my iSCSI targets, but I attempted to create a brand new iSCSI LUN + Target and it came online. I will continue to investigate, but I doubt that it has anything to do with the missing driver at first. Quote
IG-88 Posted September 23, 2017 #10 Posted September 23, 2017 34 minutes ago, centranex said: I can confirm that by using the extra custom ram disk created by @IG-88, I was able to migrate from DSM 5.2 to 6.1.3 with the Adaptec 6405E controller. then how is your controller and hdd configuration or is it possible to have hba like access? Quote
NoviceNAS Posted September 23, 2017 Author #11 Posted September 23, 2017 I'm up and running! That was a right faff... Ok, short version. Previously configuring the controller through the PMC MaxView option in UEFI. I suddenly noticed that although I had set the disks to Enabled, they were showing as Disabled. So I set them to Enabled again. Lo and behold, they set back to Disabled. Something was going on with the actual controller config settings. I downloaded the CLI version of the ARCCONF tool, made a bootable USB, and went in that way. All disks showing completely healthy. I then tried creating a JBOD via the CLI, rebooted, and everything works!! So it would appear that the underlying issue wasn't actually Xpenology at all, but for some reason the UEFI interface not retaining/implementing the settings. Thank you all for your help, I wouldn't have got through the thought-puzzle without it! Quote
centranex Posted September 23, 2017 #12 Posted September 23, 2017 I actually noticed that it appears to be functioning but it is giving errors like: synoscgi_SYNO.Storage.CGI.Storage_1_load_info[31452]: disk/disk_exceed_unc_thr_cache.c:28 Failed to get exceed unc thr from /run/synostorage/disks//sdc/exc_bad_sec_ct synoscgi_SYNO.Storage.CGI.Storage_1_load_info[31452]: disk/disk_is_below_life_thr_cache.c:28 Failed to get below remain life thr from /run/synostorage/disks//sdc/below_remain_life_thr I also installed 4 new disks and unable to create a Raid-5 disk group, it fails. Quote
centranex Posted September 24, 2017 #13 Posted September 24, 2017 5 hours ago, IG-88 said: then how is your controller and hdd configuration or is it possible to have hba like access? You need to enter the controller's (HBA's) Array Configuration Utility and simply setup the disks as JBOD. It was functioning flawlessly with DSM 5.2 Quote
IG-88 Posted September 24, 2017 #14 Posted September 24, 2017 did you set up every disk as sinlge (and creating a raid in dsm) or made one big jbod array if single drives, how did they represent in dsm, like a raid volume with distinguishable number or looked every volume the same how is your plan to detect a failing disk (the usual tools for the controller for detection and mesages like mail are not present in dsm) Quote
NoviceNAS Posted September 24, 2017 Author #15 Posted September 24, 2017 The Adaptec JBOD approach is (by default) a RAW pass through, so they appear as individual volumes. This also means they represent as physical disks in Xpenology, and I can treat them as normal :). Quote
NoviceNAS Posted September 24, 2017 Author #16 Posted September 24, 2017 I should say that for now I've just used random disks to get things up and running. Quote
IG-88 Posted September 24, 2017 #17 Posted September 24, 2017 can you see vendor id, serial number and smart status or is it just a volume without status information (like the mentioned hp raid volumes on p400/p410) Quote
NoviceNAS Posted September 24, 2017 Author #18 Posted September 24, 2017 I don't know hot to view Vendor ID or serial number for any drive, but I can confirm that it's not reporting the SMART status in the Storage Manager. Quote
IG-88 Posted September 24, 2017 #19 Posted September 24, 2017 when in storage manager / hdd/ssd you see disk1, disk2, ... on the right there is a arrow showing down to indicate it can be opend to see more, if opend on normal systems you will see the disks name like Hitachi HDS6C5050ALS650, the serial number of the disk, ... with the serial number you know what disk to change, without it can be somtimes hard to figure out what disk is faulty (in non sysnology hardware there is no "slot" number or the conting of the slots can be different when changing dsm version like 5.2 -> 6.1) Quote
NoviceNAS Posted September 24, 2017 Author #20 Posted September 24, 2017 Gotcha, doesn't show in the detailed view, only if you have the icon view enabled. No, for those drives it doesn't display it. That aspect is covered though since all the controller connections are labelled so I can see which is which. I think by the looks of it the only notable drawback I'm going to have is that the lack of SMART awareness in Xpenology will mean any non-terminal failures won't be picked up until they're terminal. SHR mirrors should protect against issues with that at least. Doesn't seem to be perfect, but definitely seems to be "good enough". Quote
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