mpt-status: monitoring your RAID array

Ever since one of the hard drives in our brand new server failed before it was even in production (good start to a new server!), I have been waiting to monitor the RAID status on our server. I had forgotten all about it until recently, when I stumbled apon a nice little tool called mpt-status.

It was a little bit of a pain to install, but once I got it going, it works perfectly, and puts my mind at east:

[root@mars ~]# mpt-status
ioc0 vol_id 0 type IM, 2 phy, 278 GB, state OPTIMAL, flags ENABLED
ioc0 phy 0 scsi_id 8 SEAGATE  ST3300656SS      HS0A, 279 GB, state ONLINE, flags NONE
ioc0 phy 1 scsi_id 1 SEAGATE  ST3300656SS      HS09, 279 GB, state ONLINE, flags NONE

Perfect!

You can read a quick guide on installing mpt-status at http://www.gladsheim.com/blog/2009/03/13/building-mpt-status-for-centos-52/ . As the article said, I had to install the kernel source but it wasn’t too difficult.