[Discuss] automation for installing to or converting to RAID

[joe at polcari.com (joe at polcari.com)]

 FYI - here are the relevant parts of a kickstart I just used to build a 26 disk system with hardware and software raid and the resulting df of the system after it was built. (CentOS 6.2, in case it matters)The BIG problem I had was that there are 2 different LSI controllers, as well as the motherboard SATA and the controllers always came up in a random order (really) and the clearpart and zerombr commands do not seem to work as advertised. Existing software raid arrays were getting mounted by the kickstart and the LVM creation would cause the kickstart to fail.I solved these problems with the %pre script at the end of the kickstart, which, of course, runs pre-kickstart.################zerombrclearpart --all --initlabel# some of the LSI disks show up before the MB disks!# sda and sdb are on the MB, sdc is a 16 disk hardware raid10 array, the last 2 external disks are spares# the 2 disks next to the spares are swap.bootloader --location=mbr --driveorder=sda,sdb,sdc,sdd,sde,sdf,sdg,sdh,sdi,sdj,sdk part raid.01 --size=250 --asprimary --ondisk=sdapart raid.02 --size=1 --grow --ondisk=sdapart raid.04 --size=250 --asprimary --ondisk=sdbpart raid.05 --size=1 --grow --ondisk=sdbpart swap --size=1 --grow --ondisk=sdhpart swap --size=1 --grow --ondisk=sdi part raid.09 --size=1 --grow --ondisk=sddpart raid.10 --size=1 --grow --ondisk=sdepart raid.11 --size=1 --grow --ondisk=sdfpart raid.12 --size=1 --grow --ondisk=sdg # rootvg (boot is below)raid pv.01 --device=md1 --level=RAID1 raid.02 raid.05 # optvgraid pv.03 --device=md3 --level=RAID1 raid.09 raid.10raid pv.04 --device=md4 --level=RAID1 raid.11 raid.12part pv.05 --size=1 --grow --ondisk=sdc volgroup rootvg pv.01volgroup optvg pv.03 pv.04 pv.05 logvol / --fstype ext4 --size=1 --grow --percent=100 --name=rootlv --vgname=rootvgraid /boot --fstype ext3 --device=md0 --level=RAID1 raid.01 raid.04logvol /opt --fstype ext4 --size=262144 --name=optlv --vgname=optvg %packages....(omitted)%end %pre#!/bin/bash## put the disks in the right order since the controllers come up in random order on these boxes!# internal, external array, external raw disks#rmmod -f megaraid_sas