[ale] Ugh! Kernel panic when loading ext3 modules in RHAS2.1w/kernel 2.4.9-e30.smp

[Greg Freemyer]

On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 21:32, Jonathan Glass wrote:

> Actually, these servers have Dell/MegaRAID cards in them, using the
> megaraid_2002 drivers.  THese are connected to a Dell Powervault 220S with
> the backplane configured for clustering (joint, I think), fully populated
> w/13 146GB U320 SCSI drives.  Unfortunately, Dell refuses to sell me the
> U320 SCSI RAID card, insisting it isn't compatible with Linux, thus I'm
> stuck using the drives at 160MB/s.  BTW, the 220S has an onboard
> controller which handles the RAID configuration (8 drives in a RAID 5 for
> 1TB of storage), and the controller cards just access the 220s's BIOS for
> configuration data.
> 

That makes more sense, the IBM cards are the only ones I have seen where
the RAID intellegence is kept in the individual cluster servers.  The
cards are very cluster aware, and one card can shutdown the other card
if it is mis-behaving (or so I believe).

I have been using DEC (I mean Compaq, no I mean HP) shared shared
storage systems for years.  Those setups don't use cluster aware
controllers, Therefore you typically need 2 controllers per host and 2
connections to the disk array giving you redundant SCSI busses.  That
way if one of the controllers hangs up, the kernel moves to the backup
bus and keeps on trucking.

BTW: I don't think you can buy any of those old DEC designed systems new
anymore.  At that level they are pure Fibre-Channel now.

> This chassis has lost 6 drives since May 2003, and at one point it took
> down drive 0 on both server's internal RAID arrays.  During the last
> failure, two drives went down simultaneously in my RAID 5, causing me no
> end of grief and heartburn.  Dell has replaced the backplane in the 220s
> (basically rebuilt the whole box), and is supposed to be replacing both
> machines. Granted, they promised to replace them within 30 days the week
> before Thanksgiving, and it still hasn't happened.  I'm so annoyed with
> this server setup that I'm looking at IBM servers for my next rollout.

My next rollout is likely to be IBM as well.  Hopfully in March or so. 
It will likely be using IBM rack servers / SUSE / heartbeat / ServeRAID
/ shared JBOD disk shelf.  The project is for a fortune 50 company. 
They spec'ed the hardware and SUSE.  The clustering software is not yet
nailed down, but I'm pushing for heartbeat.

> 
> Yes, I'm using the heartbeat s/w, as I think it is bundled in the RHAS 2.1
> software.

I'm not sure what RHAS uses for clustering, but it is not 'heartbeat'
from the Linux-HA project.  

SUSE does use/support heartbeat on their cluster solutions.

IBM/SUSE/Intel seem to be sponsoring the Linux-HA project.  IBM and SUSE
seem to be doing the core development, while Intel is writing
extensions.

You might want to check it out for the future.

> 
> Thanks
> 
> Jonathan Glass

Greg
-- 
Greg Freemyer