I have some general questions regarding my Compaq Proliant 3000 with regard to SCSI cards/connections and external storage systems (such as the F2)... So if you happen to know something about this stuff (and want to answer a few basic questions) latch onto this thread.

2 Compaq Proliant 2500 SMP servers running FC3 in RAID0 and RAID5 with LVM. 10 total hotswap SCSI drives, a 15/30G DLT and 30G DAT. 572M ram on one and 256M on the other. 4 network interfaces to 2 subnets. Amanda backup server, Postgresql and Postfix on one and a krb5 KDC and NTP on the other. USB flash storage, parallel port ZIP, and 1 shared LaserJet. Happiness is a full rack, but the lights dim when I reboot. Old junk but it works.

nz

I've got a 2500 too. same specs as the second one listed above. this box never liked RH, but Slackware runs on it like champ. i use it as a firewall/router/printserver. also use it for long operations live encoding video. yeah, it takes for ever, but it frees up my other systems to do wharever, and it doesn't affect the performance on my network.

Ok, well I have a question regarding some SCSI stuff...

Background Info:
I have a proliant 3000 with dual PII 450MHz and 1GB RAM with a SmartArray 3200 SCSI controller.
I have four 9.1GB drives (with RAID0) and three 18.2GB drives (with RAID5), obviously all hot-swappable
The system has run RH9.0 no problem for some time

Here are some pics of a Proliant 3000 (but this one isn't mine and doesn't have dual CPUs)
http://www.echeloncomputers.net/ebay...s/DSC06084.JPG
http://www.echeloncomputers.net/ebay...s/DSC06085.JPG
http://www.echeloncomputers.net/ebay...s/DSC06086.JPG
http://www.echeloncomputers.net/ebay...s/DSC06088.JPG

Now please notice the external SCSI connections on this system.
There is a SCSI card (that resides in a PCI slot) with two external SCSI HD68 connections (my system has just one)

Besides those differences my system is pretty close to identical. One more thing I should point out beforeI get to my questions is that I see another external SCSI connection (HD68) which is directly above the monitor plug, which is 'built-in' near the mouse and keyboard plugs...
http://www.rwic.und.edu/~podollb/scsi.jpg

Now to the questions:
So if we are talking about my system, I have 2 external SCSI HD68 connections (the built-in one and the one that is external from the SCSI card):

Now my question is many fold:
The external SCSI connection I see, is it really a HD68?
The external SCSI connection I see, which is attached to the SCSI card in a PCI slot, is that my SmartArray 3200 card?

Now jumping a bit ahead, I have purchased a "Compaq Proliant Storage System F2":
http://www.tsmartz.com/new-ebay/images/lot%201-874F.JPG
http://www.tsmartz.com/new-ebay/images/lot%201-872F.JPG
http://www.tsmartz.com/new-ebay/images/lot%201-873F.JPG

And I also purchased a "Compaq Proliant Storage System U1":
http://www.rwic.und.edu/~podollb/u1_a.gif
http://www.rwic.und.edu/~podollb/u1_b.gif
http://www.rwic.und.edu/~podollb/u1_c.gif

Now I see those look to have external HD68 connections as well. So I will need some male-to-male HD68 cables to connect those systems to my system. Right?
And if so, is it just as easy to connect it and fire it up (assuming the RAID arrays are configured at some point)?

And then I am starting to wonder why some systems (like the one I used reference pictures from) have a dual channel SmartArray3200 SCSI card? Do the external SCSI connections just extend the arrays on the card? For instance, my SmartArray3200 card has to arrays (that I noticed when I configued it), but it only has one external SCSI connection on the back. So does that mean only one of the arrays can be extended to external storage? Moreover, I notice that on the F2 I purchased there are two channel SCSI connections on the back... Does this mean I need to hook it to two external SCSI connections on the back of my system to use all the drive slots? To muddy the water even further I have read about "Simplex" and "Duplex" but am not up to par on what that means...

Thanks ahead of time for any help, I find this an interesting little project and just need some help on a few of the unknowns I am running into... So thanks!

sorry so long with no reply, been fighting with a laptop. yes both are really hd68's. no, the smart array 3200 is the controller integrated into the backplane, the pci card is a separate controller (if it's like mine.) as far as the rest goes, you need a scsi expert. i believe you can assign your arrays however you wish, if you have the configuration floppies - i can with mine. although mine is a bit older, and compaq may have changed it (in their infinite wisdom)

I am glad I found this blog. I am in need of some assistance with the install of Suse 10 on my Proliant 3000 it has the same 3200 controller and I can not make it work.
I have tried Suse, Ubuntu, Solaris 10 and had multible problems mostly revolving around the controller drivers.
I have been to Hp's website and downloaded multiple packages but they mainly look like small linux shell prompt utilities.
So if someone could help here is the first problem I see:

When installing Suse 10 Iget to the driver loading page and it locks up. When I use manual install mode I get a prompt to install the boot floppies. My experience is that these floppies do not have the drivers needed to run the machine. My thinking is to use an external driver but I don't know if theis is true. if so how?

Thank you in advance and please take it easy on me I am a growing nube...this means my base is growing but my height is not.

All your base will belong to me
Joe M
joeandannie.us

I have 3 DL 380's running RHEL4 and CentOS4. ATA/IDE cards with 500gb drives RAID1. External Compaq RAID5 enclosuers (3 of them) 12x9.1gb SCSI drives. External Compaq DLT 7000 array, 4 drives. LVM/Software RAID mixture. They're 733mhz-800mhz, with 512mb-2.5gb RAM.

OK, so I guess I'm qualified to answer some questions about these darn RAID enclosures. You attach them to a SCSI controller card. I think i have a 3200. You then configure them BEFORE doing anything with the OS, using the SmartStart CD I believe. You'll get 95gb formated RAID5 from twelve 9.1gb SCSI drives. They appear like this in /proc/partitions

74 0 97744560 ida/c2d0
74 1 97744544 ida/c2d0p1
75 0 97744560 ida/c3d0
75 1 97744544 ida/c3d0p1

To break that down a little, That is CARD 2, Disk 0, Partition 1. I run each RAID enclosure on a separate controller.

When hooking them up, you need a SCSI cable that is 68hd-68hd (dare I say a standard SCSI cable).

As for the SuSE question, on RH they use this "cpqarray" driver. I don't know if SuSE uses the same driver or what.

You can download the ISO's for the SmartStart cd's from the cpq/hp.com website.

Hi Guys

I have an issue installing my compaq proliant 2500 with a later version of SUSE, i managed to install the old 7.3 pro version of SUSE, the installation pack came with some modules on the install floppies which allowed for the setting up of the raid adaptor, due to the troubles I was having I ended up installing a new adaptor I had grabbed on Ebay, anyways, the installation process of the early SUSE prompted for installing extra modules, this worked fine, the machine was great, anyways I thought I'd upgrade to a more modern version to take advantage of the newer more secure kernels etc, but at no point during the install will it allow me to manually add any modules hence it continually reports unable to find hard drives.

I have a 5 x 9Gig scsi array in it set up such that it is 2 drives and one swap drive.

Another thing i have never managed to verify is, the machine is a twin P200 Pro cpu machine it never appears to have more than one CPU active, is there any way of finding out?


I agree with the smartstart thing these servers are landfill without the smart start software.

I also have an external scsi unit which i had intended to use as a learning facility, but keep stumbling too early on in the game...

Rgds

Simes

Again, I'm a RedHat user, not a SuSE user. I recently did an upgrade switching from (3)12x9gb RAID enclosures to (2)500gb IDE drives. I used the internal RAID enclosure (4x18gb SCSI) as my / partition. (didn't bother doing a boot, no problems with RH-ES 4 update 4).

The advantages to having 500gb RAID1 (software RAID) are mirrored drives. Writes are done to both at the same time while Reads are done from either drive. So the write performance is alright, and the read performance is good. On my other backup server I have RAID0 which is great for read/write speed, but there is no redundancy. The SCSI RAID5 is a bit slower for the most part, because it requires some calc's to be made on read/writes, but redundancy is good.

If anyone would like to buy some Compaq RAID enclosures, send me a msg! I have 5 of the things, 3 fully stocked with 9.1gb SCSI's and 2 more for parts plus some spare 9.1gb and 2gb drives.

For testing to see if you're system is using multiple processors check the proc. [root@system /]# cat /proc/cpuinfo
That should tell you what CPU's your system has active. The new version of top only shows "cpu(s)" while the old version showed cpu0 and cpu1 separately.

Once again, I'd say test out CentOS (the free version of RH Enterprise). I like it better than Fedora (the test version of RH). Maybe that'll work if you don't mind switching distros.

I will bump this thread by asking a new Proliant 3000 question.

I want to run NEW Distros of SimplyMEPIS, KNOPPIX and DEBIAN ETCH on the Smart Array 3200.

A FEDORA 6 and ETCH both install, but will NOT configure any boot loader, subsequently, the system will not boot. SimplyMEPIS and KNOPPIX will run LIVE, but will not install, they get errors when they install or try to mount ida drives.

I really want to keep using the Smart Array RAID5 configuration. Anyone out there using the Smart Array 3200 successfully?