[feature] Intel RSTe/VROC hardware-assisted software RAID support (aka FakeRAID)
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
MAAS |
Invalid
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
curtin |
Triaged
|
Wishlist
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
(Some, Many?) Intel systems support a hardware-assisted software raid called "RSTe", it is hardware assisted in that the arrays can be managed partly from within the BIOS and assists during boot time but once the OS starts it needs to support the RAID operations directly similar to how standard software RAID works.
mdadm has support for RSTe, and will automatically detect and setup such arrays. It appears that you setup the RSTe RAID in the bios/option rom for the RAID and it writes the headers onto the disks that mdadm reads and sets up automatically.
In a MAAS environment, mdadm does detect these arrays, but obviously MAAS intends to control the RAID configuration so wants to wipe it instead. It could perhaps instead import this configuration - however implementation wise it would probably need to learn not to wipe the existing configuration when trying to deploy it. It is possible to create a fresh RAID configuration in this format using mdadm (the commands are different to a normal mdadm creation) however it's not clear how well that would work over using the metadata already setup by the option ROM.
This request comes from a customer who had Supermicro SYS-5038ML-H12TRF with Super X10SLE-F Boards (C224 chipset) however this feature is supported on a wide array of Intel chipsets including at least Intel X79, C222, C224, C226, C602, C602J, C604, C606 and C608.
To avoid confusion when looking at terms, this was previously known as "Matrix RAID" circa 2010 but renamed RST - Rapid Storage Technology (for desktop systems) and RSTe (e=enterprise) for the enterprise version on server systems.
Documentation from Intel on this feature:
[1]: https:/
[2]: https:/
[3]: https:/
Changed in maas: | |
importance: | Wishlist → Undecided |
milestone: | none → next |
Changed in curtin: | |
importance: | Undecided → Wishlist |
status: | New → Triaged |
Changed in maas: | |
milestone: | next → none |
Thanks for the feedback; this sounds like it could be a valuable enhancement to MAAS. We should discuss separately from this bug if it can be put on the roadmap.