Megaraid

This page describes administering the PowerEdge RAID Controllers (PERC) in CSE's recent Dell servers.

In the [distant] past, Dell's RAID controllers used LSI chips. LSI was subsequently acquired by by Avago/Broadcom. Very possibly the chips still come from LSI/Broadcom, but the command-line utilities from LSI/Broadcom (megacli and, later, storcli) which could be used to examine and change the configuration of earlier Dell PERC controllers no longer detect the Dell's controllers. Instead, there's a Dell-specific tool called perccli64 which needs to be downloaded from Dell's website. perccli64 looks extremely similar to storcli.

Installing the binary in /root/bin

• Download the latest "LINUX PERCCLI Utility For All Dell HBA/PERC Controllers | Driver Details" from Dell's website...
  • E.g. PERCCLI_7.2313.0_A14_Linux.tar.gz
• Untar the file:
  • tar zxf PERCCLI_7.2313.0_A14_Linux.tar.gz
• Change to the created directory:
  • cd PERCCLI_7.2313.0_A14_Linux/
• Unpack the deb file:
  • ar x perccli_007.2313.0000.0000_all.deb
• Untar the file containing the actual binary:
  • tar --xz -xf data.tar.xz
• Move the binary into place:
  • mv opt/MegaRAID/perccli/perccli64 /root/bin/
• Enjoy!

Useful commands

perccli64 help

Displays help. Very concise.

It's notable that:

/cx refers to the controller a command should apply to. Replace 'x' with the controller number (see perccli64 show all (below).

/ex refers to the enclosure attached to the specified controller. Replace 'x' with the enclosure number (see perccli64 /cx show all (below).

perccli64 show all

Lists all the PERC controllers found.

perccli64 /cx show all

Outputs details about the specified controller. Lots of detail. Includes a list of attached enclosures, a list of all physical disks in each enclosure, the RAID configurations of these disks, disk statuses, RAID statuses, etc.

perccli64 /cx /ex show [all]

Outputs some detail about the specified enclosure. Includes the number of physical disks in the enclosure.