Show disks in GUI named by their drive bay?

[masgo]

I am using Proxmox on typical servers with multiple drive bays. The disks show up on the GUI as sda, sdb, ... which is not very helpfull identifing a disk. I would like them to show up named after their respective drive bay, eg. bay-1, bay-3, ... . This woule make thins like replacing a broken drive much easier. .. "What? drive 4 is broken?" ok, pull it out, new drive in, done.

Where to geh this informations? I checked on different servers with different HBA/RAID controllers, and it always boils down to /dev/disk/by-path/

Example
# ls -la /dev/disk/by-path/*0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Oct 27 18:53 /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:02:00.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 -> ../../sda
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Nov 25 13:19 /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:02:00.0-scsi-0:0:1:0 -> ../../sdc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Nov 25 13:19 /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:02:00.0-scsi-0:0:3:0 -> ../../sdd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Oct 27 18:53 /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:02:00.0-scsi-0:0:4:0 -> ../../sdb
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Nov 25 13:19 /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:02:00.0-scsi-0:0:5:0 -> ../../sde
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Nov 25 13:20 /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:02:00.0-scsi-0:0:7:0 -> ../../sdf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Nov 25 13:20 /dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:02:00.0-scsi-0:0:9:0 -> ../../sdg

The bold number is the slot number.

It would also be okay, if the drives would show up as pci-0000:02:00.0-scsi-0:0:0:0

 

[akxx]

@masgo
that's a good idea!
and in your usecase ... wouldn't it be helpful to have a button in gui, that you can start flashing the drive light?
(i think smarttools can do this on command level, can't it?)

 

[masgo]

@masgo
that's a good idea!
and in your usecase ... wouldn't it be helpful to have a button in gui, that you can start flashing the drive light?
(i think smarttools can do this on command level, can't it?)

This would obviously be a great idea.

As far as I know, smartmontools can not do this. There are specialized tools for that (check out this: https://serverfault.com/questions/64239/physically-identify-the-failed-hard-drive ). The overall problem seems to be, that the mechanisms used to control these backplane LEDs vary depending on make and model.

But on most servers I encountered the bays are clearly labeled. On the few exceptions, I labeled them myself. And "replace drive 4" is not much more difficult than "replace the drive with the blinking LED".

The only time I actually used the blinking function was after cabling up the backplane to check if I did it right.

 

[stark]

This would obviously be a great idea.

As far as I know, smartmontools can not do this. There are specialized tools for that (check out this: https://serverfault.com/questions/64239/physically-identify-the-failed-hard-drive ). The overall problem seems to be, that the mechanisms used to control these backplane LEDs vary depending on make and model.

But on most servers I encountered the bays are clearly labeled. On the few exceptions, I labeled them myself. And "replace drive 4" is not much more difficult than "replace the drive with the blinking LED".

The only time I actually used the blinking function was after cabling up the backplane to check if I did it right.

A lot of times a simple "dd if=/dev/sdg of=/dev/null" can help narrow down which drive it is. Even if a failed drive has been deleted by the OS, working drives will still help narrow down the bad drive.

 

[dcsapak]

mhmm.. we could probably get the 'by-path' link relatively cheap in the disk api call, and i can see why that might be interesting (altough i would not show it by default in the user interface, only if the user configures it)

can you open an enhancement request on our bugtracker? https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/
this way you get a notification if we implement this (no promises though )

 

[alfe]

Simple workaround: Make a list with all the slot numbers and the corresponding serial numbers of all hard disks. If a disk fails, just look up the serial number and take a look at your list so you know the slot number! Beware to keep the list up to date because otherwise it is not very useful.

 

[Deepen Dhulla]

Suggestion to Have option to assign a Slot-No from GUI and store it PVE it-self should be helpful.

 

[pvps1]

this depends on the cabling of controller/motherboard and backplane. if you assume slot 1 is most up/left 9f your slots. thats ok. mostly. but what is slot 2? the disk right of it or below it? had both.
and I had machines where slot 1 is the most left/down(bottom) slot.

so no pci or any other path of the operating system will tell what is the real slot nr x
(besides you note it per host/hardware in your documentation or label the disk with s/n)

 

[Deepen Dhulla]

I recommend adding an "Assign Section" feature, specifying the row and slot (for example, Row 1, Slot 1). This would allow for efficient tracking and assignment of hardware HDD/SSD/NVme components. For instance, when the operating system is installed on a server model for the first time, and the first two hard disk drives (HDDs) are added, their locations can be noted and assigned accordingly. Additionally, displaying the PCI number as a bonus would clarify the configuration at any given time. Based on the common server configuration, this feature would facilitate understanding the pattern of assigned HDD bays.