MegaRAID Storage Manager (MSM) Installation

C H A P T E R 7

The MegaRAID Storage Manager (MSM) program provides you with graphical user interface (GUI) tools to configure RAID storage systems, based on the LSI 106x controllers used in some of the x64 servers. To determine if your server supports this program, refer to the Product Notes for your platform.

This chapter includes the following topics:

Overview

Installing the Program

Note - MegaRAID Storage Manager (MSM) is also known as MegaRAID Storage Manager - Integrated RAID (MSM-IR) for versions earlier than 2.x. Some x64 servers support MSM 2.x; others support MSM 1.x versions.

Overview

The MSM program enables you to configure the controllers, physical disk drives, and virtual disk drives on your system. The Configuration Wizard in the MSM program simplifies the process of creating disk groups and virtual disk drives by guiding you through several simple steps to create your storage configurations.

MSM works with the appropriate operating system (OS) libraries and drivers to configure, monitor, and maintain storage configurations attached to x64 servers. The MSM GUI displays device status in the form of icons, which represent the controllers, virtual disk drives, and physical disk drives on your system. Special icons appear next to the device icons on the screen to notify you of disk failures and other events that require immediate attention. System errors and events are recorded in an event log file and are displayed on the screen.

Installing the Program

You can install MegaRAID Storage Manager-IR on x64 Servers with the Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Red Hat Linux, and SUSE Linux operating systems.

This section includes the following topics:

Installing MSM on the Windows OS

To Install MSM on the Linux OS

Installing MSM on the Windows OS

Use this procedure to install the MSM program on an x64 server with Windows Server 2003.

Note - The MSM installation files and drivers were installed on your system if you selected the correct optional components during the Windows 2003 Server installation. If you did not select these components, continue with this procedure.

The MSM packages are available on the product Tools and Drivers CD, and also as part of an archive called windows.zip. You can download CD ISO and the archive from the Sun web site. See Obtaining Utilities.

To Install MSM on the Windows OS

1. Insert the Tools and Drivers CD into your server’s CD-ROM drive. Alternately, you can extract the contents of the windows.zip archive.

2. Navigate to \windows\wk3\packages\ (on the CD) or wk3\packages\ (in the archive).

3. Run the installation application in this directory. This is a file with a name of the form InstallPackxxxxxx.zip, where the xxxxxx is a version string.

The Sun Fire Installation Package dialog box appears.

4. Click the Optional Components check box.

5. Click Next to accept the settings.

6. Review the Important Note, and then click Next.

The Welcome to the Sun Fire Installation Wizard appears.

7. Click Next.

The End User License Agreement dialog box appears.

8. Select I accept this agreement, and then click Next.

9. Click Finish.

10. Click Yes to restart your system to complete the installation.

The MSM program has been installed on your system.

Windows Installation Error Messages

The Windows Installer program might display error messages during the installation process. The error message text is self-explanatory. If you need more information about these messages, see the list of installer error messages on the Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) web site at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/msi/setup/windows_installer_error_messages.asp

Installing Windows Drivers

For information about drivers for the Windows Server 2003 Operating System (OS), refer to the Windows Operating System Installation Guide for your platform.

To Install MSM on the Linux OS

Use this procedure to install the MSM utility and the required drivers on a Sun x64 Server with the Linux OS.

1. Make sure the driver mptctl is inserted.

This module is required for a Linux system to be administered by MSM. To find out if the module is correctly inserted, type the command:

# lsmod | grep mptctl

If you see output similar to this, then mptctl is inserted. If the command has no input, mptctl is not inserted.

To insert mptctl, type this command:

# modprobe mptctl

2. To ensure you have a fully operational system to run the MSM utility, install a full Linux installation (everything) on the system.

Using the MSM utility on a Linux system requires a number of shared libraries that are not included in the basic install of most Linux distributions.

3. Locate the files before proceeding.

The files are located on the Tools and Drivers CD provided with your system, if available, or from the Tools and Drivers CD image, downloadable from your product web site. For instructions on downloading the application from the Tools and Drivers CD image, see Obtaining Utilities.

The MSM files are in /linux/tools/raid directory.

4. Insert the Tools and Drivers CD into the CD-ROM drive connected to your server, or copy the files to your system.

5. Locate the file MSM Linux installer file in the raid directory.

6. Copy the installer to your home directory by typing:

# cp MSM-Linux-installer ~

7. Uncompress and then untar the installer

# tar zxvf MSM-Linux-installer

8. Locate the disk directory created by uncompressing the installer, and move to this directory by typing:

# cd disk

9. Run the install script by typing:

# ./install.sh

10. Read and accept the License agreement.

11. Select the type of install that best suits your needs.

To Create a Partition and Filesystem on Linux OS

1. Determine which device is the RAID device.

2. Check the last entries in the dmesg log to determine which SCSI device is the LSI RAID device. For example, type:

# dmesg | tail -30 | grep Attached

This searches the previous 30 lines of the dmesg for the appropriate line. A line such as the following will appear:

Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 2 lun 0

In this case the disk sda would be the SCSI device.

3. Create a new partition by typing:

# fdisk /dev/device

a. Type n to create a new partition.

b. Type p to make it a primary partition.

c. Press enter to choose the default and start the partition at the beginning of the drive.

d. Press enter to choose the default and end the partition at the end of the drive.

e. Type w to write the new partition to disk.

Note - You can create a partition that is smaller than the maximum size of the device or create multiple partitions on the device. See the fdisk man page for details.

4. Create a new file system.

Note - You can create a number of different types of file systems under Linux. This section covers a default configuration of ext2 and ext3 file systems. Refer to the documentation included with the file system of your choice for complete instructions.

You determined the base name of the RAID device in Step 2 above. That device name refers to the RAID as a whole. When you created a partition on that RAID, a device name was created to address just that partition. If the RAID is sda, and you followed the above directions, the partition device would be sda1. If there were multiple partitions on a disk there would be multiple corresponding device names (sda1, sda2, sda3, etc).

Now that a partition exists on the raid device, a file system needs to be written to that partition. The following commands create an ext2 or ext3 file system. Replace device with the device name referencing the appropriate partition.

a. For an ext2 file system, type:

# mke2fs -i 1024 /dev/device

b. For an ext3 file system, type:

# mke2fs -i 1024 -j /dev/device