Photon OS

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  • 1.  Can one install Photon on Raid1 volume ?

    Posted Dec 11, 2022 02:27 PM

    Hardware
    Server board with Intel ERST2 (LSI onboard controller)

     

    Using the configuration utilty, I have created a RAID1 volume.

    When I start the Photon Install, thw 2 hard disk are seen as separate devices instead of a virtual volume.

     

    Is it possible to install Photon in a such a configuration ?

     



  • 2.  RE: Can one install Photon on Raid1 volume ?

    Posted Dec 12, 2022 06:34 PM

    Hi,

    Photon OS downloadable iso/ova/../ do not hold built-in the richness of drivers like common-purpose Linux distros e.g. Ubuntu.
    The richness of Photon OS comes mostly from security advisories for packages -  with focus on cloud-native applications.

    Your Intel product has a few features but not like (newer) hardware raid.

    https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000056660/server-products/sasraid.html

    Btw, software raid isn't supported for ESXi, too.

    For explore purposes, run tdnf install linux-api-headers. See the configuration file /usr/src/linux-headers-.../.config.
    Even with adding 3rd party packages, features you want supported by the kernel, need to be activated. 

    Imho go with raid0 for the baremetal homelab.



  • 3.  RE: Can one install Photon on Raid1 volume ?

    Posted Dec 12, 2022 11:17 PM

    My goal was not to save much data on Photon since I have a NAS for that.  I was more thinking of a mirror dual-boot like I have on TrueNAS and pfSense (FreeBSD, I know).

    I naively thought that the LSI controller would have transparently shown the virtual volume as one device right at install.This way, I would have recuparated the SSD I used for the OS and installed Photon rignt on the RAID array. Hence RAID1.

    Well, if I am to keep Photon on the SSD and keep the 2 WD Black for files, I agree that RAID0 makes more sense.

    Thanks



  • 4.  RE: Can one install Photon on Raid1 volume ?

    Posted Dec 13, 2022 12:22 AM

    mdadm does not come with Photon.

    When I created the RAID1, I used this: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Raid1_with_LVM_from_scratch

    Now that I want to go the RAID0 way, I found a discussion : mdadm vs lvm.

    In Photon baremetal, what would be recommended as a RAID0 solution ?



  • 5.  RE: Can one install Photon on Raid1 volume ?

    Posted Dec 13, 2022 07:36 AM

    Facing the existing REST2 limitation of the (older) Intel hardware, you could check the VMware compatibility guide and run ESXi on a standalone SSD with attached NAS. Provision Photon OS as virtual machine. Keep the second SSD e.g. for ESXi release test purposes.

    Photon OS as docker image is an alternative and requires baremetal support from the host os.