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ttmentregas

5 Posts

77928

February 20th, 2014 03:00

Dell PowerEdge VRTX / M520 - Linux support for Shared PERC 8 controller when?

Hi there, 

In September 2013 I bought a Dell VRTX + 3x M520 after having been sold the idea.

What I hadn't at the time realized was that it did not support Linux which came as a shock because I had already purchased Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization subscriptions and these simply did not work because the Shared PERC 8 controller was not being detected meaning the shared storage was not available to the RHEV Hosts.

As a temporary workarround, after having been told that Linux support would be available soon, I set-up VMWare ESXi on one host running a VM that shared the storage over to two other hosts running RHEV and under a supported method.

This workarround has work thus far but at this point I am starting to wonder if Linux support will ever be added. I am now reverting to this forum to ask a simple a straightforwad question, when (if at all) will Linux support be added to the VRTX/M520 servers?

Sincerely,

ttmentregas

5 Posts

March 6th, 2014 02:00

Hello everyone, 

Well i'd like to follow up on my own question. I ended up having to go to the Linux Kernel SCSI mailing list, where development occurs for such drivers as the MegaRAID. 

Firstly, a quick note, VMWare ESXi, uses the MegaRAID drivers, exactly as does Linux in general, so the reason for one getting support before the other is beyond me. In any case I do have good news from the mailing list which I quote here:

List: linux-scsi Subject: Re: Dell Shared PERC8 RAID Controller From: adam radford  Date: 2014-03-03 21:01:40 Message-ID: CAHtARFHALG5gCKRde0r3sZ=rv6stbDU14Q+1MpUxT5Z4pDS-5w () mail ! gmail ! com [Download message RAW]

Istvan/Emmanuel,

>> 08:00.0 RAID bus controller [0104]: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID
SAS 2208 IOV [Thunderbolt] [1000:002f] (rev 05)

I will be sending a driver patch for megaraid_sas to support the Dell
PowerEdge VRTX/Shared PERC8 device later this week.  This will allow
you to run Linux with the megaraid_sas in Virtual Function (VF) mode
on the VRTX blades.

-Adam

 

So, when can expect the required support pretty soon. Then there will be other hurdles, such as getting the patch into mainstream linux distributions, getting offical support, etc. In anycase step 1 is definately nearly completed.


DELL-Chris H

Moderator

 • 

8.4K Posts

February 20th, 2014 06:00

Timentregas,

Currently we don't have a foreseeable release date, as we have to wait for Linux to create the Perc MegaRAID driver for it. Then we need to test and validate that. As Linux hasn't released the driver yet we can't say when or if it will be supported till then.

Let me know if this helps answer your question.

ttmentregas

5 Posts

February 20th, 2014 07:00

Well it answers the question but unfortunately does not help. What I don't understand is that at the time, acording to various press releases Dell was said to be currently developing the required linux support. It seems that the responsability is in fact not Dell's.

I would assume however that Dell would push for said drivers by participating in the linux kernel development and pushing for the controller support. Is Dell doing anything in this regards?

What I also don't understand is why VMware ESXi (which I beleive uses the Linux kernel) is already supporting the controller.

ttmentregas

5 Posts

March 6th, 2014 02:00

Follow up on my own question.

I ended up having to go to the Linux Kernel SCSI mailing list, where development occurs for such drivers as the MegaRAID. 

Firstly, a quick note, VMWare ESXi, uses the MegaRAID drivers, exactly as does Linux in general, so the reason for one getting support before the other is beyond me. In any case I do have good news from the mailing list which I quote here:

List: linux-scsi Subject: Re: Dell Shared PERC8 RAID Controller From: adam radford  Date: 2014-03-03 21:01:40 Message-ID: CAHtARFHALG5gCKRde0r3sZ=rv6stbDU14Q+1MpUxT5Z4pDS-5w () mail ! gmail ! com [Download message RAW]

Istvan/Emmanuel,

>> 08:00.0 RAID bus controller [0104]: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID
SAS 2208 IOV [Thunderbolt] [1000:002f] (rev 05)

I will be sending a driver patch for megaraid_sas to support the Dell
PowerEdge VRTX/Shared PERC8 device later this week.  This will allow
you to run Linux with the megaraid_sas in Virtual Function (VF) mode
on the VRTX blades.

-Adam

 So, when can expect the required support pretty soon. Then there will be other hurdles, such as getting the patch into mainstream linux distributions, getting offical support, etc. In anycase step 1 is definately nearly completed.

timhor

2 Posts

March 12th, 2014 10:00

For those interested, Adam posted 2 days ago the patch for Shared PERC8 on scsi list. It will be integrated into 3.15 kernel. 3.15 is an inaccessible dream to people that use RHEL or SLES. Even RHEL 7 beta use 3.10. A backport of the patch to 3.10 is quite easy and I was able to get it working like a charm. I didn't even looked at 3.0 which is used by SLES 11.3 If you want to build the new megaraid_sas driver with Adam patch, be sure to pick Sumit Saxena's patch too + the repost. Cheers, Timhor

ttmentregas

5 Posts

March 12th, 2014 10:00

Thanks for this update timhor.

In my case I'm interested in RHEV (Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization) integration which is currently using kernel 2.6.32. I've already opened a feature request with Red Hat which can be followed here https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1075166

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