HostingGeek

Recently I did a Xen 3.0 install on a Dell 1750 server with RAID5. By default the Xen 3.0 installation (from source) doesn’t compile in the LSI drivers for the RAID card, so I had to enable the option in the Dom0 kernel in Xen.

So I went in to the xen0 directory under my Xen source (/usr/src/xen-3.0.0/linux2.6.12-xen0) and ran:

make ARCH=xen menuconfig

I then went to Device Drivers -> SCSI Device Support -> SCSI low-level drivers -> and enabled the “LSI Logic New Generation RAID Device Drivers”, because after all… Newer is better right?

I recompiled Xen and the Xen kernels (cd ../; make kernels; make install) and reboot the machine and went on with my day.

I got a call from the client later in the day that the server was reporting a problem with the RAID array. Long stroy short, the customer was running a NAGIOS plugin to monitor the RAID array via the /proc/megaraid entry. Little did I know that the new generation RAID device drivers in the 2.6 kernel no longer make use of the /proc/megaraid proc entry, so it was breaking the NAGIOS plugin.

To correct this problem use the “LSI Logic Legacy MegaRAID driver” instead of the “LSI Logic New Generation RAID Device Drivers” in the 2.6 kernel (this is not an option in the 2.4 kernel). That will give you back the /proc/megaraid entry and you should be all set.

Additionally, since you are already compiling a kernel, you should enable the kernel option “Use register arguments” under “X86 Processor Configuration”. This option will allow you to use the Dell OMSA device drivers for additional control over your Dell PowerEdge server. You can read more about it here: http://www.uta.fi/~pauli.borodulin/dellomsa/omsa44.html