Intel Server Board S5500BC - RAID not detected

[needee]

Intel Server Board S5500BC is RHEL Certified/Supported product.
Intel® Server Board S5500BC - Tested operating systems

via BIOS HW RAID 5 configured, but upon booting the system with RHEL 5.2 media, rhel5.2 shows me three hard drives.. It means that rhel didn't detect the HW RAID

I think I have to install the RAID driver.
a) how to install RAID driver on RHEL ? (esp when there is no floppy drive on the machine). I have never installed the storage driver before.
b) please help me locate/find the RAID driver(S5500BC) for linux, I searched the Intel website, but failed to find the RAID driver of the S5500BC for Linux.

Regards
needee

[Rubberman]

First, check on Intel's web site to see if there is a bios update available. Next, search there also for notes about Linux compatibility, especially regarding the internal RAID support. As you surmise, you likely need to install the raid driver. I have CentOS on my system and yum shows the dmraid driver as installed on the system, though I'm not using it right now.

So, when you boot the installation disc, it might not see the drives as RAID volumes, but you might be able to configure them as such before the OS is actually installed on them.

Personally, I prefer to not use RAID for my system disc, but more for user data. I have a swappable boot / system drive and keep a bit image of the system drive on an external drive, so when I need to restore the system to a known good image, I just swap out the boot/system drive, boot a recovery cd, copy the bit image to the new drive, and am back in business. However, if I cannot afford an hour down time, then I would use RAID-1 (mirrored drives) for my system disc, and raid 5/10 for data.

[needee]

I searched a lot, but didnt found RAID driver for Linux available on Intel' website for this Mainboard

Actually there is no RAID Controller on this Main Board and I was not aware that this server does not have any RAID Controller. This Intel Board S5500BC has a built-in RAID(software RAID) feature. This is a Software RAID but enabled from the BIOS and configured(raid 1 or 5 etc) via a Utility CD of the Motherboard, and the linux 2.6 kernel does not support them at all. Somewhere I read that this type of RAID are for Windows machines only.

[Rubberman]

Well, there are nice RAID controllers you can use that are supported by the Linux dmraid software - I have one on my CentOS system. I think it cost me about $50 USD. Mine is for eSata (external array), but for about the same you can get ones with internal drive connections.

[needee]

>Well, there are nice RAID controllers you can use that are supported by the Linux dmraid software
I didnt properly got you... actually as per my understanding, if I have a RAID controller, then Linux cant see the multiple HDDs, but instead Linux will see only a single Drive, all the RAID functions/logics are performed solely by the Controller. So for me your words are pretty shocking

I might have used some incorrect words, sorry for my bad English

[Rubberman]

That's actually not true. You can configure raid controllers as either JBOD, or various levels of RAID. Mine is set up as JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Discs), but I can also configure it for RAID-1,5,10 and possibly others.

[needee]

thanks for sharing this information.

Regards
needee