PVE 5.0 on a DELL Poweredge C1100 - RAID

[stefanzman]

Hello,

Trying to install on PVE 5.0 on a DELL Poweredge C1100, and it does not appear to be detecting the hardware raid array correctly. While it does see that 4 disks, they are detected individually - even though a valid RAID10 array is defined and operational.

Base on the RAID BIOS config, it shows Intel Matrix Storage Mgr 8.9.1. See screenshot below:



During installation, the available targets list all 4 disks (not a single volume):



After setup, the software is loaded on the first disk:



Then the array is in a degraded state with that disk excluded.

Is there any way to get PVE 5.x to see the full RAID array and not break it? I suppose I could use the ZFS RAID 10 option of PVE, but I am thinking the hardware RAID would be much faster.

Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Stefan

 

[dcsapak]

AFAICS you have a "fake" (or software-) raid which is not supported by linux and not the same as a "real" hardware raid. it depends on the os to have the correct drivers (mostly windows only) to correctly use the raid

 

[stefanzman]

Yes. I think you may be correct. According to Wikipedia:

Matrix RAID is a computer storage technology marketed by Intel. It is a firmware, rather than hardware or software, RAID system.

It if is firmware, they that is just "software RAID" built into the chipset. They go on to say:

Linux supports Matrix RAID through device mapper (DM-RAID) for RAID 0, 1 and 10, and Linux MD RAID for RAID 0, 1, 10, and 5.

So, I guess my question would be should I try to load this driver separately to use the ZFS RAID option built-in to PVE 5.0?

 

[dcsapak]

since software raid is not supported by us, i would go the zfs route, but be aware of the requirements and limitations
see also https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/ZFS_on_Linux

 

[stefanzman]

Thanks, Dominik.

I went and installed ZFS RAID 10, and it seemed to go OK. Looking over that link, not sure if there are any show-stoppers.

Going to run some test to make sure everything is operating as expected.