Messages in this thread | | | From | brian@worldcon ... | Date | Tue, 5 Sep 2000 14:27:02 -0700 | Subject | 3ware controllers and fatal failure mode design decision |
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I was wondering if any one knows of a way around the following problem, and I wanted to warn people considering 3ware controllers as a storage solution.
I talked to 3ware already and they don't have a solution.
The latest 3ware firmware for their current products requires that all drives in an array be absolutely identical.
Say you setup an 8 drive RAID 10 array and a year later a drive blows out. You *MUST* replace it with an absolutely identical drive. It must ID completely identifical!
Whoa! What if the drive isn't made anymore?
Seems like a nightmare scenario to me.
Worse yet. I just ran into it.
When I first got my 3ware controller it was perfectly happy to mix and match drives. However, due to a bug in the linux driver which was later corrected by 3ware they suggest I upgrade the firmware.
The controller continued to boot and operate happily but when it came time to change the array configuration the BIOS refused to work with mix drives!
I figure there is probably a way to modify something so I could have the OS lie to the 3ware controller and I could get my mixed batch of drives back online.
Pointers would be appreciated.
Maybe we can turn the 3ware product line back into a useful product.
-- Brian Litzinger <brian@litzinger.com>
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