Can Server 10.2 boot from a software RAID?

[Admin]

[ Posting for Jeremy Reichman ]

Does Mac OS X Server 10.2 allow booting from software RAIDed (RAID 0 or 1 as formatted in the Drive Utility) drives in older Power Macs?

Previous versions of Mac OS X Server did notÖ

[pepi]

If you create your RAID 0 or 1 with Apple’s Disk Utility it will be bootable running Mac OS X 10.2 and X.2 Server. This works on PowerMacs as well as on the Xserve. From an AppleTechPromoter in Germany I’ve heard that Apple plans to support RAID Level 10 in one of it’s next DiskUtility updates since Xserve and PowerMacs support up to 4 HDs now, which would work fine for L10.

Of course you don’t even get to see a SoftRAID in Mac OS 9. (Classic surely does.)

[jaharmi]

I can confirm that the software RAID 0 and 1 are bootable in Jaguar. I have set up one Power Mac G4 each way now — one on RAID 0, one on RAID 1. Each system is using Jaguar workstation, not Jaguar Server.

Note: I’ve heard — I think from MacFixit — that the ability to rebuild a RAID is broken in 10.2 and 10.2.1. This worries me a little.

I’m using RAID 1 on a pair of IBM Deskstar 75gxp drives — the infamous “Deathstar” series. (And the infamy is exactly why I wanted RAID 1 in the first place.) This is on an older dual 450 G4, and it works fine. However, either one of the drives is seemingly going bad or something else is going on. I hear whines or chirps twice about every 5-15 minutes, and at least one drive repeatedly spins up and down at about the same interval. I’m wondering if it is the same sort of noise associated with some of the Maxtor drive failures I’ve heard about …

I have not yet tried disconnecting a drive and attempting to rebuild.

[macsupport]

I can verify that there is indeed a bug in Apple’s built in “RAID” software. I am running a simple RAID level 1 setup. I was doing some fail type scenario testing today and unplugged my primary enclosure. I have since lost one of the drives and attempts to rebuild it are so far no successful. Does anyone here have any suggestions for alternatives that I could use to support my RAID? Frankly it seems pretty ridiculous that Apple would even market this product. “So your drives are mirrored until you lose one”?!?!

Any help would be appreciated.

[legacyb4]

So the procedure would be:

1) boot off CD
2) run Disk Utility
3) create RAID (1, in my case)
4) install clean system to RAID partition

Hrm, for some reason, I didn’t get that far and went ahead with a single boot and a RAID1 on my data drives.

So, theoretically, I should be able to:

1) Yank the existing RAID (temporarily)
2) Install pair of same-sized HDs and create RAID1 partition
3) Use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy existing OS X system to the RAID1 partition
4) boot off new partition?

[quote:f5a22caafd=”pepi”]If you create your RAID 0 or 1 with Apple’s Disk Utility it will be bootable running Mac OS X 10.2 and X.2 Server. This works on PowerMacs as well as on the Xserve. From an AppleTechPromoter in Germany I’ve heard that Apple plans to support RAID Level 10 in one of it’s next DiskUtility updates since Xserve and PowerMacs support up to 4 HDs now, which would work fine for L10.

Of course you don’t even get to see a SoftRAID in Mac OS 9. (Classic surely does.)[/quote:f5a22caafd]

[legacyb4]

Was doing a little off-line testing on a spare machine to see if this would work and have not been able to get 10.2 Server to install properly on a RAID 1 internal IDE array on a PowerMac G3.

This machine was previously running 10.2 client on a single drive so my firmware is properly updated. I hooked up a pair of matched drives, booted off the CD, ran Disk Utility, built the RAID 1 set, then installed Server to it. So far so good. Then on reboot, got a the question mark/smiley folder icon…

Any ideas why?

Cheers.

[quote:331dfa9987=”legacyb4″]So the procedure would be:

1) boot off CD
2) run Disk Utility
3) create RAID (1, in my case)
4) install clean system to RAID partition

Hrm, for some reason, I didn’t get that far and went ahead with a single boot and a RAID1 on my data drives.

So, theoretically, I should be able to:

1) Yank the existing RAID (temporarily)
2) Install pair of same-sized HDs and create RAID1 partition
3) Use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy existing OS X system to the RAID1 partition
4) boot off new partition?

[quote:331dfa9987=”pepi”]If you create your RAID 0 or 1 with Apple’s Disk Utility it will be bootable running Mac OS X 10.2 and X.2 Server. This works on PowerMacs as well as on the Xserve. From an AppleTechPromoter in Germany I’ve heard that Apple plans to support RAID Level 10 in one of it’s next DiskUtility updates since Xserve and PowerMacs support up to 4 HDs now, which would work fine for L10.

Of course you don’t even get to see a SoftRAID in Mac OS 9. (Classic surely does.)[/quote:331dfa9987][/quote:331dfa9987]

[jaharmi]

I don’t know why the Power Mac G3 wouldn’t work. Maybe it only works on later edition machines. I no longer have my Power Mac G3 (b/w) to test on (not that I would have had the spare drives laying around anyway, since I invested in the IBM Deskstar line … sigh).

Which brings me to the rebuilding of a RAID set. I lost one of my IBM 75GXP 75 GB drives. Luckily, I was mirroring drives so I haven’t lost data yet. The RAID set had an error in Disk Utility. I was unable to rebuild it while the workstation (running 10.2.3) was live. So I rebooted into the Mac OS X 10.2 installer CD.

I was able to go through the motions of rebuilding the drive, but about 75% fo the way through the process, it failed. This has now happened twice.

I suspect the second drive is just gone — it’s the older of the two drives, and the one that hasn’t been replaced with a “serviceable used part” by IBM yet. But I can’t seem to even reformat it with Disk Utility, to see if the drive is the problem.

Any ideas?

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