Managing RAID Arrays on Dell PERC Controllers

I had a drive failure in a Client's Dell PowerEdge 2400 server. Which I wasn't alerted to until the client called me Monday morning when the entire server was down. Needless to say, I was a little pissed off, that I had no warning the drive was failing and the RAID 5 array didn't go into degraded performance mode and continue on like normal (as it should have). Now I have to come up with a 36gb SCA drive in a couple of hours to get them back up and functioning.

I managed to procure a suitable replacement drive from a good friend, fly back up to the client's office and let the RAID 5 rebuild the array. In the mean time, I'm researching Dell's Linux supported RAID management tools and discover the afacli tool. Which is the best thing since sliced bread for PERC controllers. Too bad it's not directly supported on Gentoo or SuSE 8. So I go ahead and download it, look at the requirements and emerge lib-compat to provide the necessary old glibc libraries, and viola! It works!.

Enclosure Status

Enclosure
ID (B:ID:L) UpTime D:H:M   PowerCycle Interval Door     Alarm
----------- -------------- ---------- -------- -------- -----
 0  0:06:0         0:00:00        0       10   UNKNOWN  OFF

Enclosure
ID (B:ID:L) Fan Status
----------- --- -------------

Enclosure
ID (B:ID:L) Power State        Status
----------- ----- ------------ -------

Enclosure
ID (B:ID:L) Slot scsiId Insert  Status
----------- ---- ------ ------- ------------------------------------------
 0  0:06:0   0   0:00:0     0   OK ACTIVATE
 0  0:06:0   1   0:01:0     0   OK ACTIVATE
 0  0:06:0   2   0:02:0     0   OK ACTIVATE
 0  0:06:0   3   0:03:0     0   OK ACTIVATE
 0  0:06:0   4   0:255:0     0   OK UNCONFIG EMPTY I/R READY NOTACTIVATE
 0  0:06:0   5   0:255:0     0   OK UNCONFIG EMPTY I/R READY NOTACTIVATE

Enclosure
ID (B:ID:L) Sensor Temperature Threshold Status
----------- ------ ----------- --------- --------
 0  0:06:0   0       81 F         120    NORMAL
 0  0:06:0   1       74 F         120    NORMAL

Drive Status

B:ID:L  Device Type     Blocks    Bytes/Block Usage            Shared Rate
------  --------------  --------- ----------- ---------------- ------ ----
0:00:0   Disk            71132960  512         Initialized      NO     80
0:01:0   Disk            71132960  512         Initialized      NO     80
0:02:0   Disk            71132960  512         Initialized      NO     80
0:03:0   Disk            71132959  512         Initialized      NO     80

Which shows that I have 4 36gb SCSI-2 (80MB/s) and the array has 2 slots left over for hotswap drives (when I get them). I'm very happy with the tools and wish I would have known about them when I deployed these servers, but alas, these probably weren't available at that time. So, kuddos for Dell in providing them now.