How to find which raid I am using.
 

Hi
I have been handed over a few servers(in remote location), and they are running RHEL3 or 4 in them. How do I find if they are using any software / hardware raid of any level ? Also how to find if they are connected to any external storage box.

What is the expected result of cat /proc/mdstat if there is any level of RAID there ?

Also I have a 146 GB internal disk in one of the boxes how to create RAID-5 + LVM on it(Fresh Installation).

Thanks in advance.

...Why don't you just run the command and see for yourself?! Yes, "cat /proc/mdstat" will tell you about the RAID setup and its current status.

As for hardware RAID, lspci - and look for a RAID controller.

Thanks for the reply Indienick, here is what I see:

[root@aquarius ~]# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities :
unused devices: <none>
------------------------------------------
[root@aquarius ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9726 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 9204 73931098+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 9205 9726 4192965 82 Linux swap
------------------------------------------
lspci does not show any RAID Controller.

Thanks

The old maintenance document for the server says - "Original Harddisk size - 146GB , Usable after RAID5 - 73.3GB"
What should I make out of these.

That is bizarre; however, if nothing informative shows up in /proc/mdstat, chances are the RAID is not running. Try starting it with:If that doesn't work, are you able to open the case of the server and take a peek to see if there is a hardware RAID controller on-board?

Found the info required.
 

This thread may be old but I found the answer so thought of putting it here. I found out from the DELL support website and the dell customer service desk that these Dell PE 1750 servers are using PERC - Power Edge Raid Controller which is inbuilt and allows to enable, disable or reconfigure it at the boot up time. Pressing Ctrl + M at the boot uptime takes to the raid configuration screen where you can do all the necessery changes. The dell support guy however informed that we cannot see the status from the OS!!!

I'd have a skim over the logs and look for any boot up raid messages. Then I would look for any mdadm messages in the logs and look for any fatal crashes or things like that.

It might give you all the info you are looking for.

hwconfig