3Ware – Manage your RAID arrays via http

 Opteron, RAID  Add comments
Aug 282006
 

3Ware – Manage your RAID arrays via http

3Ware provide a good CLI to their products. I wrote about that a couple of weeks ago. They also provide a very nice web interface, available as the sysutils/3dm port. A recent discussion on the FreeBSD AMD64 mailing list brought this to my attention. I had used the 3DM tool from 3Ware, but had forgotten about it. I also did not know there was a web interface. I was glad to find it. CLI is great, and I’ve used it many times. But a web interface can present information in a fashion that CLI cannot. Hyperlinks make it easier to get to where you want to be. I will show you how to install the port, and provide some screen shots to give you an idea of how the web interface works.

Installing the port

To install the port: 
cd /usr/ports/sysutils/3dm/
make install clean
To start the port, add this to /etc/rc.conf: 
3dm_enable="YES"
And issue this command 
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/3dm start

First time configuration

The URL used to access the web interface depends on the OS version you using. If it’s 32 bit, you can use https. Otherwise, you use http. In all cases, just browse to the hostname of your server, using port 888 (the default). For example: 
http://opti.example.com:888/
You should see something like this:

The default password is 3ware. Full documentation is installed at /usr/local/share/3dm2/en/. I found out about the password by reading 3DM_2_OLH-2-04.html. After logging in, you should see this:

Your first action should be changing the password and perhaps changing the port upon which the application listens. You should click on 3DM 2 Settings to change these values. I also recommend restricting access using your firewall. As far as I know, there is no way to set the IP address upon which the interface listens, and it listens to all IP addresses. However, you can disable remote access using the RemoteAccess option in /usr/local/etc/3dm2/3dm2.conf.

Controller and Unit information

Details information about your controller is easily found:

You can view the unit information for your controller. In my case, it shows the main RAID array and the two hot spares.

Detailed information regarding each unit is also available. The following screen shot shows the 6 drives involved in my RAID-10 array. Unit zero consists of three RAID-1 arrays. The data is then striped over these three arrays.

Looking at unit 1, which is just a single drive, held as a hot spare, there’s not much to see:

You can also see all the drives, the unit they are in, and their firmware versions.

Detailed additional information about each drive is also available. What I find interesting about this screen shot is it seems to indicate that NCQ is not supported. If I recall correctly, I think I must manually set NCQ on for each drive.

You can also modify the controller settings through this screen:

But wait! There’s more!

I’ve only shown a few screen shots from the 3DM web interface. There is much more functionality than is displayed above. Here are a few of the items not shown above:
  • Scheduling (for rebuild/migrate tasks)
  • Maintenance (perform these unit tasks: verify, rebuild, migrate, remove, and delete)
  • Monitor alarms
  • Monitor the battery backup unit
  • Set up email notification
If you have a 3Ware card, then the sysutils/3dm port will be a useful tool to add to your collection. I will continue to leave 3DM running, mainly because of the email notification system build into the daemon, but I’m sure I’ll use the tool when the time comes to maintain the array. In addition, I will also continue to run my NetSaint 3Ware plugin.