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I tried installing SoftRAID for use through an Areca 1320 into a Supermicro 24 slot JBOD box, which uses a LSI port expander. None of the attached disks returns any SMART statistics in the monitor panel. Is this a supported configuration? I did check with Areca's monitoring tool, and I was able to read the data.
Also, is there any detailed SMART information ala smartmontools in your monitoring program?
It also doesn't support any of the SMART information for any of the attached drives in an Xserve RAID, which isn't a huge surprise, since there was only ever one program that I used which COULD read the SMART information. Apple's own administration program could only report drive power on hours, and that worked only if you had drives with Apple firmware.
Posted : 14/12/2015 7:44 pm
SoftRAID can get the SMART data on an XServe RAID if you put it into JBOD mode.
The Areca will probably depend on what SATA card you are using. Most do not pass any SMART data, or only Pass/fail data, not extended SMART parameters.
Since the only relevant SMART data to predict disk failure are associated with reallocated sectors, that is all we use. We also display power on hours to give you a sense of how old the disk is. Other data, such as temperature, is not related to early failure, so it would not be relevant to SoftRAID's predictive failure to track/monitor that.
See the google study on 100,000 disks, or the backblaze blog, which both demonstrate only reallocated sector related data is important to predict disk failure.
We are working on tools to obtain more complete SMART data from additional devices and buses.
Posted : 14/12/2015 7:56 pm
Topic starter
The Areca will probably depend on what SATA card you are using. Most do not pass any SMART data, or only Pass/fail data, not extended SMART parameters.
The 1320 is a host adapter, and it does return extended SMART parameters if you use their command line tool. The card does work for creating arrays, here is a snapshot of the report, and it is getting some information, like the rev of firmware, but it isn't reporting power on hours, for example.
Posted : 14/12/2015 8:17 pm
Topic starter
The card does work for creating arrays, here is a snapshot of the report
Well, that's embarrassing. I created the arrays with Disk Utility instead of
SoftRAID. The stats work if you actually use the right driver :-(
Posted : 14/12/2015 11:27 pm
So SoftRAID is showing correct power on hours and a reallocated sector count (hopefully of 0)?
Posted : 15/12/2015 2:50 pm
Topic starter
So SoftRAID is showing correct power on hours and a reallocated sector count (hopefully of 0)?
No, it only is reporting I/O transactions and power on time (see attached).
Note the SAS bus, ID and LUN are all zeros
Posted : 15/12/2015 7:37 pm
None of that information was derived from SMART. What is most relevant is if the host adapter can pass through Reallocated sectors, for example, an important predictor of future failure. Its possible the "SAT-SMART" open source driver may enable that on some SATA cards, but most simply do not pass on that data.
Posted : 15/12/2015 11:43 pm
Topic starter
So SoftRAID is showing correct power on hours and a reallocated sector count (hopefully of 0)?
No, it only is reporting I/O transactions and power on time (see attached).
Note the SAS bus, ID and LUN are all zeros
I ended up just buying an ATTO host adapter. All of the SMART information is correctly reported now through the SAS backplane expander.
One software request. Please change the disk initialization code to absolutely, positively, not allow a repartition of a mounted file system. I wiped out
eight 6tb mounted volumes on my Xserve RAIDs when they were accidentally
included partitioning the SoftRAID disks. They were intermixed with the disks on the SAS expander and I didn't notice they were there when I shift-clicked the volumes to partition). I've spent the last week restoring the data to them.
Posted : 21/12/2015 7:54 pm
