I'm installing my first new Dell SCSI controller card (PERC 6) and storage array (MD1000) into my first RHEL server. I've done this plenty of times in a Windows world, but never in Linux. I know the BIOS will pick up the SCSI card and I can go into that during the boot screen to set up how i want the array (RAID5), but once Linux comes up, will it automatically find and mount the drives, or do I have to do something?

Kinda a newbie question, but since its about hardware i'm posting it here, hopefully that's ok.

Linux has extensive SCSI support. The controller will be found and the drives recognized. You should have no trouble.

Edit:

Upon googling a bit on the particular controller, I find that RHEL 4 and later support that card series. I presume you are using a recent RHEL.

But how will it know what to mount the new volumes as, or will it arbitrarily assign it a name, similar to how windows will assign the next available drive letter to a new drive.

I cannot speak to that particular controller because I've never used it. How it will assign device names to the drives by default ordinarily will be defined by their position on the controller; they'll be assigned identification and mounted as they are found. RAID drives should be recognized as only one drive (the controller should handle the details).

If you are booting with grub, you will be able to redefine how device names are assigned using a device.map file. I suppose there is a way to do this using LILO, but I haven't used LILO in nearly a decade and couldn't tell you how to do it. I think RHEL uses grub.

As for mounting the drives, you can mount any drive with any name you choose in any location you choose. The system will set up defaults, with mountpoints in /mnt and the definitions in /etc/fstab. You are free to change these to suit yourself.

You also should investigate symlinks; you'll find this to be a very very convenient way to set up virtual mountpoints and have multiple names pointing to the same drive.

If your experience is solely with Windows, you are about to have a mind-expanding experience. The default mechanism used in Windows is primitive and VERY limiting. It makes it extremely hard to reconfigure a system. The funny thing is that, under the surface, Windows HAS deployed a modern drive mounting mechanism. But they haven't brought it out to where it is easily usable, and its API is very incomplete. I have no idea why; it seems to me to be one of the more stupid Microsoft decisions.

In contrast, Linux is almost infinitely flexible. You can mount drives wherever and however you choose. You can move them around on the fly. You can refer to the same drive by multiple names. Reconfiguring a system is a trivial job.

Thanks for the info jiml8. Sounds like it should be pretty straight-forward. I just need to power the system down to install the new card, then it should automatically find it on reboot, then i'll make it all RAID5 in the raid controller BIOS, then when Linux starts it should see the new array as one big huge drive. It won't automatically mount it though, i have to issue some command for this new array to be mounted as /data, right?

This is where my newbie colors shine thru.

Linux probably will automatically mount it. I don't know where RHEL will put it; I would expect it to be someplace in /mnt. You can easily change this, though to /data if you wish either by changing fstab or creating a symlink.

You do need to make sure that RHEL has the right driver for the controller. It should have it...

OK, guess i'll have to read up on how to change fstab then, as i want it permanently to be /data.

One last question, is there a way to tell if my server already has the drivers or whatever it needs for the perc6?

You want the megaraid driver. Do a locate on megaraid, or look in /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/scsi/

I have it on my Mandriva workstation, even though I use an Adaptec SCSI controller.

there is a megaraid folder and a megaraid.ko file there, so i think i'm all set! many thanks jiml8