installing an OS on a SCSI raid array

[tking]

The computer club I'm running at my high school has just gotten 3 old-school servers to mess around with. They are HP netservers that are about 6 years old. P2-450 dual proc, with scsi raid arrays. They all have neat stuff like redundant power supplies and the scsi drives are hot swappable.

Does anyone have a quick how-to on how to set up windows 2000 server edition on something like this? The expertise in the room is more or less exclusively on home PCs and these things definately aren't home PCs ;)

I'm thinking that we would have to install scsi/raid drivers first? How do you get the machine to recognize that it is full of hard drives?

Thanks for any advice.

[r8500]

What I would try first is booting to the 2000 CD and see if it will let you load it. Being that old, the SCSI drivers might be built into the OS.

If that doesn't work, then you need to get the Raid drivers from HP, and put them on a floppy. Then boot to the Windows cd, and when you see the part that says "Hit F6 to install 3rd party scsi drivers" Do that, and follow the screens from there.

[Sterling_Aug]

Windows should never be loaded onto a SCSI RAID array. I would add an IDE drive for the OS and let the RAID array for data and apps.

[r8500]

Originally posted by Sterling_Aug
Windows should never be loaded onto a SCSI RAID array. I would add an IDE drive for the OS and let the RAID array for data and apps.

Well, in the case of a server though Sterling, a lot of them don't have IDE built in anymore. You have to load the OS on the Raid.

[tking]

These things don't appear to have IDE, so someone must have installed OSs onto the raid array at some point.

I'll try the windows 2000 thing and see what happens.

I think the CDrom is also scsi. These things are so scsi, I get scsi just touching them! :rolleyes:

Thanks for the ideas.

[dajogejr]

Originally posted by Sterling_Aug
Windows should never be loaded onto a SCSI RAID array. I would add an IDE drive for the OS and let the RAID array for data and apps.

Why do you say that...Sterling, just out of curiousity?

Seeing as how I think we'll all agree SCSI drives are faster and more reliable than IDE drives...with the addeded redundancy of RAID 5 or so...

Just want to know your reasoning...that's all...
;)

[tking]

I'm curious too.

I've been told that OS's can't be installed on scsi raid as well. Why not? Or is this hoo haa? I've got a little old 8gig ide drive I could toss into the server, assuming we can navigate the labrynthine maze within and actually find the IDE connections.

In the latest news we've managed to boot from the HP smartstart disk (available on their website) and we managed to boot into the linux redhat 9 startup, but it stalls during the raid driver installation on the first disk.

'Tis a strange business this scsi...

[Sterling_Aug]

There is nothing wrong with installing Windows on a SCSI drive, as long as it is not part of a RAID array.

I do not have any websites handy that explain this, but I'm sure someone will be able to find something.

[tantone]

In the past, I've always found it best to install Windows on two drives in a RAID1 array, then have another RAID5 array for the data/apps.

[tking]

Originally posted by tantone
I've always found it best to install Windows on two drives in a RAID1 array, then have another RAID5 array for the data/apps.

Why? We really want to know! :) Is it a matter of redundancy and backup? I've got to explain this to 30 curious computer club kids, so they'll want to know the whys.

We got RH9.0 Linux installed on the Netserver LC3 last night. It's running fine on the raid5 array. It turns out the cdrom on it was ka-ka. A new cd-rom later, it booted right up and installed. The kids want to turn it into a game server for CS source.

Meanwhile, we had the leathery faced pro who gave us the servers in for the club meeting last night. He recalled there being some problem with the raid controller in the compaq server (Linux never had drivers written for it?). He has since dug up an old compaq scsi card which we will try next week.

[tantone]

Redundancy.

Since the data/apps drives are going to get 99% of your traffic, that should always be a RAID 5 for speed and redundancy. You don't want the OS on the same array, but you also don't want to have to reinstall the OS should the drive die.

So a RAID1 (mirroring) on the OS and a RAID5 on the data/apps gives you what you need: redudancy for the OS, and speed/redundancy for everything else.

[Sterling_Aug]

This all assumes you have the time, money, and resources to install all of the hardware required, that is 2 SCSI hard drives for the RAID1 OS install and 3 or more SCSI drives for the RAID5 data array plus the cost of a hardware RAID controller fpr the RAID5 array.

[tantone]

Sure. That's an ideal server setup.

If you can't afford that, or can't piece together the equipment for it, then you do as GWB suggests and negotiate with yourself over where you'll deviate from the ideal to match the reality.