Keyboard, ah you are lucky!  Back in my day, we had to program our
drives using mechanical switches, holding magnets over the platter and
holding live wires feeding the glowing thermionic valves. Etc.

Anyway, tomorrow is Wahid's last day, I expect it will be au revoir and
not adieu?

The honourable Samuel Skipsey will be presiding.

Here is my writeup from last week:
http://storage.esc.rl.ac.uk/misc/CloudExpo-DataCentreWorld-jens.docx

I didn't want to attach it in case we don't want it in the mailing list
archives.

Comments and questions welcome.
-j


On 13/03/2015 13:22, Matt Doidge wrote:
> On 03/13/2015 12:10 PM, Sean Brisbane wrote:
>>> managed to tab my way to victory for one partition so far.
>>
>> I have discovered a fantastic piece of technology that aids in the
>> configuration management of LSI cards via the webbios. Perhaps I
>> should talk about it at the next storage meeting?  Image attached.
>
> :-P
>
> Roger doesn't allow such us luxuries! Up here in the grim North we're
> lucky to have a keyboard to configure our servers with.
>
> I hear that up further North they've perfected the art of server setup
> via violent swearing, but I can't seem to get the API right.
>
>>
>> Cheers (and sorry),
> Another :-P for you squire.
>
> Have a good one all!
> Matt
>
>> Sean
>>
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: GRIDPP2: Deployment and support of SRM and local storage
>> management [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of David Crooks
>> [[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: 13 March 2015 11:51
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Wrestling LSI raid cards into shape
>>
>> That’s great - and yes, I’d agree :-)
>>
>> Good luck!
>>
>> Cheers,
>> David
>>
>>> On 13 Mar 2015, at 11:48, Matt Doidge <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks David - the webbios is proving to be only horridly painful to
>>> use, rather then impossibly painful to use like the CLI, but I
>>> managed to tab my way to victory for one partition so far. Just 7
>>> more to go. I sense today is going to be a high-caffeine day.
>>>
>>> Cheers!
>>> Matt
>>>
>>> On 03/12/2015 05:09 PM, Matt Doidge wrote:
>>>> Thanks David, there is indeed a webbios thing advertised alongside the
>>>> preboot cli. I'll give it a go, I can't make any more of a hash of it
>>>> then I already have!
>>>>
>>>> But that's tomorrow's job now!
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Matt
>>>>
>>>> On 03/12/2015 04:57 PM, David Crooks wrote:
>>>>> Hi Matt,
>>>>>
>>>>> As another option, would the WebBIOS be useful if it’s available? On
>>>>> our new machines (which sounds similar, and have LSI MegRAIDs in
>>>>> them)
>>>>> there’s the option for using the WebBIOS instead of the PreCLI, which
>>>>> might give you another avenue of investigation.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> David
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 12 Mar 2015, at 16:45, Doidge, Matthew <[log in to unmask]>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hello everybody. Bear with me on this one!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I have 4 volumptuous new 36 bay supermicro boxen with LSI raid cards
>>>>>> in it just waiting to be lovingly turned into DPM Pools. Noticing
>>>>>> that they had been supplied with lop-sided volumes I booted up the
>>>>>> "preboot CLI" for the cards (essentially MegaCLI without the Mega,
>>>>>> and much of the CLI). Like a bafoon I deleted the existing Virtual
>>>>>> Drives with ne'er a thought for what I was doing (beyond the 15
>>>>>> minutes of man page searching to figure out how to take these ill
>>>>>> thought out steps). Then followed a comedy of errors as I attempted
>>>>>> to type the nessicery incantation to create the new volume,
>>>>>> something
>>>>>> like this (but expanded out);
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -CfgLdAdd -r6[20:0,20:1,20:2, ... ,20:11,45:0,45:1,45:2, ...
>>>>>> 45:5] -a0
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I haven't managed to type it out correctly yet! (the pre-boot CLI
>>>>>> doesn't do backarrow keys). And the thought of having to do this
>>>>>> twice for 4 machines just makes me want to pretend it's pub-o'clock
>>>>>> on a Friday afternoon.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On this machine I've trashed all the partitions, so booting it into
>>>>>> the OS that was installed to try using the (less) nobbled proper
>>>>>> megacli utility isn't an option for this machine (and may not be for
>>>>>> the others, as part of what I want to do would trash the root
>>>>>> partition from under the OS). Sadly the ipmi virtual console doesn't
>>>>>> support pasting into it as a workaround for my inept typing either.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> My current plan, beyond taking up typing lessons, is to make a
>>>>>> rescue
>>>>>> image with the megacli in it and use that to allow me to configure
>>>>>> the machines in a proper environment.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Has anyone else had any experience with wrangling large, many disk
>>>>>> logical drives on LSI cards? Any small tips or tricks appreciated.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks!
>>>>>> Matt, doing the dance of shame.
>>>>>
>>