Subject: Re: [vserver] Sponsoring VServer getting up to date with mainline
From: Tom Laermans <tom.laermans@powersource.cx>
Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2008 21:03:05 +0200

Herbert Poetzl wrote:
> sounds good, I take it that you are using such cards
> somewhere, (they are not readily available in Austria,
> so I haven't had much personal contact with folks using
> them, not to speak of hands-on experience), but I would
> be interested in the following things:
>   
Yes, I'm using them in several boxes at work (basically all servers 
bought since 2 years) and since a short while also in my home 
fileserver, with great pleasure.
>  - can I create a raid description for the controller
>    (externally) and upload that somehow?
>    i.e. to map a preexisting raid layout
>    (just curious, not terribly important)
>   
Not that I could see, I haven't used the webinterface much, mainly the 
BIOS interface, which does not provide this possibility, I think neither 
will the webinterface.
>  - can I get access to the smart values for disk in
>    a hardware array?
>   
Hm, I haven't really looked into it, the temperature values are 
available through the CLI (and in the bios, and via snmp if you have a 
network-enabled card) but the rest of the SMART values are not, I think 
you can get to them via the webinterface.
>  - are there any restrictions on the disks (e.g. size
>    or low level commands) when driving them in JBOD?
>   
Size will not matter, I'm not sure which low level commands would be 
possible or not; I don't have a JBOD configured anymore to check. I 
think JBOD would be a waste of this controller though, assuming you 
don't mean spanning disks ;)
>  - what low level tools are available to manage and
>    monitor the arrays and disks?
>   
Areca provides a CLI tool for Linux (cli32/cli64) available on their FTP 
site.

Controllers List
----------------------------------------
Controller#01(PCI): ARC-1160
Current Controller: Controller#01
----------------------------------------

CMD     Description
==========================================================
main    Show Command Categories.
set     General Settings.
rsf     RaidSet Functions.
(...)
CLI> vsf info
  # Name             Raid Name       Level   Capacity Ch/Id/Lun  State
===============================================================================
  1 Root Volume      Khalid RAID Set Raid6     60.0GB 00/00/00   Normal
  2 Storage Volume   Khalid RAID Set Raid6   4100.0GB 00/00/01   Normal
===============================================================================

etc
> any input/experience there would be really appreciated
> (currently looking at the ARC-1680 line)
>   
I mainly use the 1110, 1160,  1260 but bios, linux driver & cli are 
identical for all, as are the features I think (except for the network 
port and the cpu speed) - apparently I don't know too much about them 
either based on this reply ;D

HTH,
Tom