Raid Monitoring Software w/ automated email reporting?

[kakashisensei]

Hi,

I just assembled a data server for my company. Its set up as a 4x1tb raid 5 using intel ich10r in vista 32bit. My boss wants it to automatically report errors, like by email when it detects a failure or any abnormal event.

Do you guys have any recommendations for software like this? Can intel's matrix manager do this, I can't find these options in it. Thanks.

 

[JASTECH]

The one that came with my LSI 8408E does that and more. Go to their site but I don't think it is compatible with other cards, it has the Intel chip so you never know.

Thanks, JASTECH

 

[Emulex]

intel matrix raid is (worse) than software raid. it is really software raid.

skip it and get a decent card. decent cards have management agents, and scream bloody murder when there is an issue.

i've found intel matrix raid with non-datacenter power uptime is best used with raid-0.

 

[ColKurtz]

I believe the Intel Matrix raid mgmt sfw logs events to the Windows event log (?). If so, you can get Vista monitor the event log and email you when it sees a specific event. Unfortunately you really need a failure in that log to show Vista what to look for and monitor in the first place.

And I agree with emulex that you should invest in a basic PCIe RAID card -- two of them if at all possible. That makes your data mobile. As it stands now, your motherboard is the single point of failure for the data. If the server dies in 2 years, your data is completely inaccessible and you're searching for a discontinued mobo on ebay while the server is down, or hoping a different one will see the data (or not nuke it). A sound backup plan (and of course RAID is not a backup) minimizes the risk, but IMO having an external controller that is host-agnostic is worth a couple hundred bucks. Highpoint and others have 4-channel PCIe sata raid controllers in the $200-$250 price range, with full alerting/SMART monitoring.

And the OS is not on the RAID5 array, is it? That's a recipe for disaster for a number of reasons. Put the OS on it's own drive or in a separate raid1 array.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Emulex
intel matrix raid is (worse) than software raid. it is really software raid.

skip it and get a decent card. decent cards have management agents, and scream bloody murder when there is an issue.

i've found intel matrix raid with non-datacenter power uptime is best used with raid-0.

+1

 

[kakashisensei]

Is it possible for convert the the intel-made array to work on the a decent add-on controller? There's nothing on the data server yet. The eventual plan was to put in a pci-e controller later on when more hard drives needed to be added, but from what you guys say, a pci-e controller w/ error reporting now would be the best solution.


This card on newegg looked good for our needs:
Highpoint x8 port card

I'm not familiar with SAS, how can 2x SAS ports connect to 8x sata hds?

 

[taltamir]

AFAIK no you cannot just move arrays between controllers... UNLESS it is an OS level array without a controller with the bios raid set to off. This is the BIG advantage of software level raid...
If your motherboard or raid card fries 2 years down the road YOU MUST get your hands on an identical model (or compatible one from the same company, but that is difficult to research) in order to recover the array.

My ZFS raid6 (raidz2) array on the hand, I can migrate between any hardware configuration, and between solaris, solaris derivatives like nexenta, and freeBSD. (and I have, to test it out)