We have a couple of Dell servers running Ubuntu GNU/linux (hardy) with MD1000 disk arrays. I’ve always assumed there must be a way in software to create arrays, configure them, initialise them, etc. in software without rebooting but I hadn’t had need of that until now and just need .
I had previously installed the DELL OMSA suite for basic monitoring but hadn’t had time to look into it in detail. I was kind of hoping for command line utilities for everything. As it turns out, most of it is web-based. Perhaps there’s a command line tool hidden in there, but the web-based one is fine for now. I’ve just popped two extra disks into a live array and am initialising them as a RAID1 array now. I’ll be shortly deciding whether to add them to an LVM device or just use the separate block device.
These sites have enough information to get one going:
- OMSA Packages for debian
- Instructions for setting up and using the Dell OMSA Tools
- Instructions for getting OMSA logins working on Debian AMD64 (I was using Ubuntu but the same package names exist on Ubuntu).
- Dell’s OMSA docs
Actually, they tell you all manner of useful things about your server’s health, whether or not you have RAID arrays. I can’t believe I’m only discovering this now.