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Date:      Fri, 27 Feb 1998 19:36:02 -0800 (PST)
From:      Simon Shapiro <shimon@simon-shapiro.org>
To:        Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, blkirk@float.eli.net, jdn@acp.qiv.com, Wilko Bulte <wilko@yedi.iaf.nl>
Subject:   Re: SCSI Bus redundancy...
Message-ID:  <XFMail.980227193602.shimon@simon-shapiro.org>
In-Reply-To: <19980228134228.40320@freebie.lemis.com>

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On 28-Feb-98 Greg Lehey wrote:
 
...

>> DPT arrays?  Simple; you make an ioctl call into the DPT driver, I
>> write a message to the controler, specifying which disk to add to
>> which array, the controller starts a hot rebuild, etc.  The details
>> escape me right now, but I belive it is doable.  Why would you want
>> to do that?  No idea... :-)
> 
> I was thinking more about what the ioctl call does.  Raid 5 spreads
> data in stripes over all drives (or subdisks if you're using a
> Veritas-like volume manager).  Add a drive, and you break this
> mapping.  The only way to rearrange is to rewrite all the disks.  Is
> that what they do?  Or are they cheating in some manner?

( At some point in this thread MarkS (from DPT) is going to enter the
thread and either explain it properly or tell me to stop violating the NDA
I so cleverly signed :-)

the IOCTL does nothing more than package a SCSI command, ship it to the
controller, wait for the reply and ship that back.  The rest is done in the
controller.  I do not think it re-writes the whole disk array.  there is no
real need for that.  I think there is some hardware support for some of
this stuff, and that DPT people know few things I do not.

Once I clear my desk of what I am messing up now, I'll look into it a bit
better.

Simon


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