Linux – How to find RAID configuration/level and RPM speed having only remote access to the server

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Having only remote access (no physical access), to a server (that is SSH), how do I (or may be is it possible):

  1. find out whether it is RAID configured or not? If it is RAID configured, whether it is software or hardware RAID? What level of RAID it is?
  2. find the RPM speed of the hard disk?

NOTE: In this case, I've access to both RHEL4/5 and CentOS4/5 based Linux servers.

EDIT

Here is an output of mount command from a RHEL4 server:

/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)

Best Answer

Software raid would probably show up in a df -h listing. Try to find references to /dev/md*. But you've mentioned vendor hardware, so I'll assume you're trying to get info on hardware RAID controllers.

Depending on the server hardware, I will try a few techniques to get system information. I start with dmidecode, usually piped into less to obtain the server make/model information (and potentially, the serial number). For HP systems, this helps narrow down to a particular model or part number. In that case, I can infer the raid controller info. For Dell, dmidecode | grep -i serial should output the service tag. You can cross reference the initial build info from Dell's support site.

HP setups are fairly easy. You can cat /proc/driver/cciss/cciss* and receive an output like:

cciss1: HP Smart Array P800 Controller
Board ID: 0x3223103c
Firmware Version: 4.12
IRQ: 122
Logical drives: 2
Current Q depth: 0
Current # commands on controller: 0
Max Q depth since init: 217
Max # commands on controller since init: 386
Max SG entries since init: 31
Sequential access devices: 0

cciss/c1d0:      587.12GB       RAID 1(1+0)
cciss/c1d1:     1000.17GB       RAID 1(1+0)

Obtaining the disk rotation speed info would require installing the HP Proliant Support Pack or at least the hpacucli utility to get the drive specifics.

For Dell and most other hardware raid controllers, cat /proc/scsi/scsi should reveal the SCSI controller and/or RAID controller config.

Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
  Vendor: TEAC     Model: DVD-ROM DV-28SW  Rev: R.2A
  Type:   CD-ROM                           ANSI  SCSI revision: 05
Host: scsi2 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
  Vendor: SEAGATE  Model: ST9146803SS      Rev: FS62
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI  SCSI revision: 05
Host: scsi2 Channel: 00 Id: 01 Lun: 00
  Vendor: SEAGATE  Model: ST9146803SS      Rev: FS62
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI  SCSI revision: 05
Host: scsi2 Channel: 01 Id: 00 Lun: 00
  Vendor: Dell     Model: VIRTUAL DISK     Rev: 1028
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI  SCSI revision: 05

Armed with the drive model numbers, you can google to obtain the specifications. The last entry in the output clearly shows a virtual disk comprised of the two physical disks listed above. You can get the exact controller spec from lspci -v.

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