Configuring Hardware RAID?

Now that I have my RAID controller driver loading and the device being recognized, how does one configure the controller from OpenWRT?
I'm using an Adaptec card.
Ways for other cards too?

After much searching I think I'm going to have to give up on my dream of running my RAID card on my router :frowning: There are no open source tools that I can find to manage any of the major RAID card brands. There are open source tools to monitor them but not configure them. The only way this would work would be to find an x86/x64 architecture router board. It would use too much energy and be so bulky.

So it looks like my options are going to be software RAID and as such I don't need a hardware RAID card sucking up energy and making heat to accomplish that. I'll have to look into another cheap option to increase the number of SATA ports like a multiplexer thing or something.

Any advice?

ZFS

Oh wait, under 2 GB of RAM.

What are you trying to achieve? An x86 with low power consumption might be a better plan all the way around. 7 W is definitely doable with multi-core, 1 GHz class machines.

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Didn't know you could configure a hardware RAID the way you describe...not without utilities from the RAID's manufacturer, of course.

I warned you about AACRAID here: Help Recognizing PCI Device
Also, while you "can" pull in HBA/RAID card utilities and drivers it's most likely more trouble (work) than it's worth. Avoid PMs unless you can find ones that uses Marvell chipset although these tend to be more expensive than a LSI card...

If you're really concerned about power efficiency get a low power cpu and a very efficient PSU, the rest will be very negligible (power usage by the motherboard, HDDs). Either you run a regular OS barebone and to firewalling etc or you setup virtualization and run like FreeNAS and OpenWrt or whatever your prefer. The first option with FreeBSD has worked great for many years in my case... :slight_smile:

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Yah you did :stuck_out_tongue:
My original plan was to attach it to my NUC which I converted my tower server over to saving a lot of power but I couldn't find a cheap adapter to M.2. that would fit. I think I saw one recently so maybe I'll try going that route again. I have to wait for the Chinese to start copying each other driving the price down. The M.2 apparently has 4x PCIe lanes.

Using the router seemed so simple but the main issue is a management interface which I did not foresee :frowning: I wish the RAID BIOS was accessible from the serial console.

I want to run a RAID 6 which is not as common as 0/1/5. I've been burned by mirror and Raid 5 before when a drive failed in both cases a 2nd failed on rebuild. What are the chances of it happening twice, right?

Depending on which you have there are workarounds but not cheap and reliable ones.

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With Seagate drives from after the floods? Pretty high.

With cheap, off-shore adapters? Pretty high.