From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Sep 16 16:29:33 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 788AD16A41F for ; Fri, 16 Sep 2005 16:29:33 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from joao.barros@gmail.com) Received: from xproxy.gmail.com (xproxy.gmail.com [66.249.82.196]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1216843D66 for ; Fri, 16 Sep 2005 16:29:23 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from joao.barros@gmail.com) Received: by xproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id i27so214285wxd for ; Fri, 16 Sep 2005 09:29:23 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:reply-to:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=oaFowru0MjUam5S+SuVOAQy3Ic75PFNn1spWu5E+ELGTkYofVcdeh48uCVGNMWrC/wpnMOxF46IbMyTzbMRC4Lxy+GDi/F8wNeauHVDNb+YpwOCvQ5p5O5xEPEckaEqRoY84Dm1VA80ZUKqNnccIueckE2Q4Ct1D+4GgnQCV/K8= Received: by 10.70.20.10 with SMTP id 10mr161027wxt; Fri, 16 Sep 2005 09:29:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.70.10.5 with HTTP; Fri, 16 Sep 2005 09:29:23 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <70e8236f050916092979979613@mail.gmail.com> Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 17:29:23 +0100 From: Joao Barros To: Scott Long In-Reply-To: <4327DC81.7040903@samsco.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline References: <1126683752.4306.6.camel@massimo.datacode.it> <4327DC81.7040903@samsco.org> Cc: Massimo , freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: raid framework from OpenBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: joao.barros@gmail.com List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 16:29:33 -0000 On 9/14/05, Scott Long wrote: > Massimo wrote: > > I would like to know what do you think about new OpenBSD raid framework > > management. > > http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=3Dopenbsd-misc&m=3D112630095818062 > > > > Doesn't it seems good stuff which is good for consideration? > > > > Regards. >=20 > Creating a unified management tool for multiple RAID architectures has > been a Holy Grail for at least 10 years, if not longer. It's > deceptively hard, though. While it sounds straight-forward and is > relatively easy to do for 1 or 2 architectures, the vast differences in > how different architectures work makes it quickly turn into a huge mess. > This is especially true when it comes to topology discovery and > management and asynchronous event notification. Often times the only > course is to degrade to a very simple, lowest common denominator > interface, which then starts to limit the usefulness of the tool. I've > been involved in several professional projects in exactly this area, and > it simply is very, very hard to do well. The OpenBSD work looks > interesting, but unless they can demostrate useful operation on more > than 1 or 2 architectures, it's not terribly impressive. That's not to > say that it can't be done and be a success, but the amount of required > effort should not be underestimated. It's relatively easy to come up > with a framework and implement one architecture module in it, then tell > everyone else to simply add more modules. >=20 > Also, it's not clear from the email whether the tool has to be manually > told to rescan and look for changes in the state of the array (not just > SES/SAFTE changes of the component drives). Displaying status on demand > is fine, but what admin sits in front of their terminal and refreshes > their monitoring apps every 5 seconds? The key is to have a an event > notification pipeline that can collect events in near real time, filter > them in a configurable way, and send out email/pager alerts when > appropriate. Also, what does this mean for a datacenter full of > machines that need to be monitored? Does a remote terminal session need > to be opened on each one in order for monitoring to work? >=20 > But, even if this particular work degrades into only being a tool for > AMI (I assume they mean MegaRAID) controllers, it's still useful and I > give them credit for doing it. Having an amr I'm most interested in this, as I guess more people are. Given that there is "customer" interest, my question is: is there interest from you in this, having it imported to FreeBSD? I've looked at the code and I wouldn't mind starting to work on this. -- Joao Barros