RAID controller management tools
As you may know, a great deal of what I earn my money on doing, is managing UNIX systems. Different types, though mainly GNU/Linux ones. One of the most important aspects of maintaining high-availablility production systems, is keeping your mind straight at the time of deployment. Thorough procedures for configuring hardware as well as software are essential, even if you only manage a few systems. In the case of failure, you need to feel confident, that the system can be restored in production-consistent state as quickly as possible.
One of the key shortcuts to ensure this, is using tools for controller management, rather than relying on configuring by hand by using the controller’s BIOS setup utility. This eliminates errors, ensures consistent configurations, and speeds up the deployment process, both for new systems and for redeployment of refitted or failed systems.
I know some of these tools, and during the following posts, I plan on writing a bit on the use of the ones I know best. The posts will be somewhat cheat-sheet-ish, and will center around the tasks relevant for deployment, maintenance and error handling. I’ll start off with hpacucli for HP’s SmartArray devices, MegaCli for LSI’s MegaRAID devices, and a small tool called cfggen for simple handling of MPT Fusion devices.
References to the individual posts will be put here, for easy reference. Ideas, comments and corrections are more than welcome. Poke me by mail, through IRC or on Twitter.