I am trying out FreeNAS 8.02, and install went without a hitch. Running it on a 3ware 9690sa 8i controller, hooked up through a supermicro case with 8 hot-swap trays. The main issue is I can't seem to get the leds on the hdd trays to work. Before(running regular raid) when I would set the card up, each drive had its own individual activity led. Is this something I have missed in all the options, or something not implemented yet? Does ZRaid allow this? Machine looks kinda dead without all the lights on :( Thanks for the help.
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HDD Lights?
- Thread starter migsutu
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There was someone else that had the same problem, but I can't find the post right now. I'll update here if I can find it.
EDIT: Found the post, but its the opposite problem, the lights were always on. Have a look, maybe something will help you find the answer.
Hard-disk-LED-lights-up-permanently
EDIT: Found the post, but its the opposite problem, the lights were always on. Have a look, maybe something will help you find the answer.
Hard-disk-LED-lights-up-permanently
Cool, will go through it and see if it can help shed any light on the problem. Thanks for the quick reply.
UPDATED:
Nothing specific related to lighting. It did peak my curiosity regarding APM, which as disabled by default on all 8 drives. I am curious if this has something to do with the lights, or if I am missing out on something by having them set to disable. I will have to research that bit more.
Main thing I would like, it to have activity lights on each drives, and for the drive to flash or easily be identified when a drive fails.
UPDATED:
Nothing specific related to lighting. It did peak my curiosity regarding APM, which as disabled by default on all 8 drives. I am curious if this has something to do with the lights, or if I am missing out on something by having them set to disable. I will have to research that bit more.
Main thing I would like, it to have activity lights on each drives, and for the drive to flash or easily be identified when a drive fails.
jgreco
Resident Grinch
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Drive LED's are generally a function of your controller, backplane, and drive choices.
Back in the mid-2000's, we were selling the AIC 24-drive chassis with some 3Ware 95xx controllers in them. The 3Ware controller, IIRC, presented headers with the drive activity status which then had to be wired to the AIC SATA backplane, but the signal levels were wrong, so we had to have little PCB's designed to piggyback on the AIC backplanes that had (IIRC) TTL inverters on them. This was frustrating at best. A later rev of the backplane "fixed" that and AIC even started providing 3Ware-compatible cabling eventually.
I then ran into it again when I tried taking one of those backplanes and using them with a Supermicro SAT2-MV8 controller. Don't remember what the problem was there, but I remember hating that my Nexenta test box had no activity lights because it was not trivial to hook up the lights.
Point is, this isn't necessarily a software thing at all. Especially where you have a manufacturer's backplane, if you are not using their controllers and their cabling, it may well be your responsibility to work out the wiring and electronics necessary for the activity LED's.
For example, if you look at this Supermicro backplane:
http://www.supermicro.com/manuals/other/BPN-SATA-933.pdf
JP26 and JP47 provide activity LED signaling from the controller. If you don't hook up a cable from the controller to the backplane, probably no activity LED's.
Drive failure lights may also require a separate set of signals, and many boards and backplanes may not support it unless they were designed as a set. With the AIC backplanes (blue activity, red fail LED) I never liked the blue activity LED's anyways, since the drive power LED's were *also* blue, and the 3Ware 9550's didn't offer a fail out, so I usually set up the fail LED as an activity LED so I get nice visible red activity lights.
Back in the mid-2000's, we were selling the AIC 24-drive chassis with some 3Ware 95xx controllers in them. The 3Ware controller, IIRC, presented headers with the drive activity status which then had to be wired to the AIC SATA backplane, but the signal levels were wrong, so we had to have little PCB's designed to piggyback on the AIC backplanes that had (IIRC) TTL inverters on them. This was frustrating at best. A later rev of the backplane "fixed" that and AIC even started providing 3Ware-compatible cabling eventually.
I then ran into it again when I tried taking one of those backplanes and using them with a Supermicro SAT2-MV8 controller. Don't remember what the problem was there, but I remember hating that my Nexenta test box had no activity lights because it was not trivial to hook up the lights.
Point is, this isn't necessarily a software thing at all. Especially where you have a manufacturer's backplane, if you are not using their controllers and their cabling, it may well be your responsibility to work out the wiring and electronics necessary for the activity LED's.
For example, if you look at this Supermicro backplane:
http://www.supermicro.com/manuals/other/BPN-SATA-933.pdf
JP26 and JP47 provide activity LED signaling from the controller. If you don't hook up a cable from the controller to the backplane, probably no activity LED's.
Drive failure lights may also require a separate set of signals, and many boards and backplanes may not support it unless they were designed as a set. With the AIC backplanes (blue activity, red fail LED) I never liked the blue activity LED's anyways, since the drive power LED's were *also* blue, and the 3Ware 9550's didn't offer a fail out, so I usually set up the fail LED as an activity LED so I get nice visible red activity lights.
jgreco, great post with lots of food for thought.
In my old file server, I am using a 3ware 9550SX-8LP along with a Supermicro Tower which included the Supermicro backplane. I guess I put that system together in ~06, maybe 05. For some reason, I thought the individual drive lights just worked when I plugged everything in. I may have forgotten additional cabling which I did. I will need to go back and look at that system to see what I did. Additionally I need to go through the 9690 controller documentation and look at the pin layout as well as the backplane's pin layout.
Going to dive into this again friday night, and will post my findings/results.
Thanks again.
In my old file server, I am using a 3ware 9550SX-8LP along with a Supermicro Tower which included the Supermicro backplane. I guess I put that system together in ~06, maybe 05. For some reason, I thought the individual drive lights just worked when I plugged everything in. I may have forgotten additional cabling which I did. I will need to go back and look at that system to see what I did. Additionally I need to go through the 9690 controller documentation and look at the pin layout as well as the backplane's pin layout.
Going to dive into this again friday night, and will post my findings/results.
Thanks again.
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