How to Monitor an Adaptec/Intel ICH10R RAID Controller (any SNMP notification options?)
SuperMicro's Super Doctor III is the software I was looking for. It is SuperMicro's equivalent of IBM's ServerGuide or Dell's OpenManage. Unfortunately, while it supports hardware monitoring and SNMP or Email alerts it does not support running on Server Core.
I have a SuperMirco server that is using the MBD-X8-DTL-I-O mainboard which is equipped with one of the lovely Intel ICH10R based fake-RAID controllers (confusingly enough reported as an Adaptec device -- I'm assuming that it is some unholy marriage of the ICH10R chipset for the controller and Adaptec firmware). After some thrashing around I was able to find the correct ACHI drivers and get Windows Server 2008 R2 installed on RAID-1 setup.
Part of my confusion comes from the fact that Windows reports the controller as an "Adaptec Serial ATA HostRAID" and the Hard Drive as an "ADAPTEC RAID 1 SCSI Disk Device" whereas during the boot process the Controllers hardware clearly reports that it is actually using the Intel ICH10R ("Controller #00: HostRAID-ICH10r at PCI Bus:00...).
I don't expect much from this controller in terms of management but is there any software (3rd party or otherwise) that can monitor the health of the RAID array and notify me (preferably via SNMP to our OpenNMS server)? This server is going off-site and it would nice to know that a drive has died without physically having to look at the Blinking Lights. All I can find is the cheesy Intel RST software which I don't think has any remote monitoring and notification facilities (it also complained that it couldn't be installed due an "incompatibility error" which is strange considering that the controller chipset is an ICH10R - but that is another question).
For those of us making do with these fakeraid cards on Windows-based platforms: How do you monitor your RAID array?
(If this is just handled by Windows, could you please point me towards a KB or TechNet article? I'm primarily an Unix admin, so if there is a simply a Windows equivalent of mdadm or raidtools I am ignorant of it).
Edit:
Things don't quite work:
- Using Virtual Disk Service via MMC doesn't work as a complete solution for me. It only sees the RAID-1 volume as it is presented to the operating system as a single disk - it has no knowledge of the underlying RAID. What I need is actual information about the health of the RAID itself (e.g., whether or not the array is degraded) not the volume it presents.
- I have installed the SNMP service and SNMPInformant, but I cannot find any reference in the MIBs for monitoring the ICH10R controller. This is an excellent suggestion but I need a little more detail to proceed. And again, how is the operating system supposed to know anything about the RAID? It just sees the abstracted RAID volume as a disk drive and the controller.
- I realize that the best I might be able to get is to use RDP to login and run Adapter Storage Manager locally but that is precisely the kind of thing I want to avoid. I can't be the only one who is stuck with using these fakeraid cards; I would hope there is a better solution for monitoring.
- The installer for Intel Storage Matrix Manager helpfully exits with the error: "This computer does not meet the minimum setup requirements for using the software". I presume this to mean that it is not designed to work with this controller (although it is listed as a supported device in the SATA ACHI section of the readme.txt).
- The Adaptec Storage Manager sorta works but doesn't really get me where I want to be. It doesn't "see" the individual drives that make up the array. It can however be 1) monitored remotely, 2) send email notification and 3) send SNMP traps. This is all nice and dandy, but if doesn't have the ability to interface with the controller it's not any more sophisticated in its monitoring than Windows' Virtual Disk Services management (see the screenshot).
Solution 1:
Just some ideas:
You could try this software if the drives support SMART: http://www.panterasoft.com/ (see HDD monitor)
You could also get the Intel Storage Matrix Manager = http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=17882&keyword=ich10r+console&lang=eng
I haven't used it for email notifications but I believe it and the RST console have that email option.
Or like Mike said, since the Storage Matrix manager fires off events to the eventvwr, you could use the feature in 08 R2 to grab those events and forward them via email or since you use OpenNMS you can grab the events http://www.opennms.org/wiki/Windows_Event_Log_Traps.
Solution 2:
actually intel storage matrix software would be your best bet....
but you would need to first go into the BIOS and change your controller from RAID>ADAPTEC to RAID>INTEL (this will brick your current install of server08, yes that means a fresh install)
some open source software has a hard time installing on the intel fake raid so supermicro (and a few others) have made agreements with adaptec use their raid bios.
little late, I know. but i try to post answers when i pull threads from google (I'm actually looking for something completely different)