Hi guys,
I am new to CentOS, and have been a long time Debian user. I am pursuing CentOS for one reason: I Need an OS that is supported with Microsoft Hyper-V Integration Tools, and therefore will allow me to use pass-through disks. Currently that is not a supported configuration with any Debian builds.

My question is this: I currently run a MDADM RAID-5 volume on physical hardware in Debian. Will I be able to mount those physical disks via MDADM running in CentOS?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Hi,
short answer to this is yes You can.

Welcome to the CentOS fora. Please see the recommended reading for new users linked in my signature.

Sorry but I fail to see what Microsoft Hyper-V Integration Tools have to do with a software RAID on Debian. Please be more explicit about what you want to do, the virtualization method, host and guest OSs involved, and the physical hardware.

The issue is you cannot use pass-thru disks in Hyper-V (direct access to my physical RAID disk members) without Hyper-V Integration Tools. I need to move my physical RAID-5 array to a VM, and in order to access the disks, the VM must be supported to allow Integration Tools.

The reason I am making this shift, is my home Lab machines are all Hyper-V hosts, and my main storage currently is Debian linux with MDADM, hosting up my RAID-5 storage. The issue is, I have a quad-core system humming away just hosting storage, which in a home lab is wasteful. I can just virtualize the storage OS, access the same RAID-5 disks as pass-thru disks, and utilize that server as an additional Hyper-V node.

So, if I understand correctly you want to take the hardware currently running Ubuntu with a software RAID5, install Windows and Hyper-V on it, install CentOS as a VM and mount the RAID5 in the VM. I really have no idea if that is workable, but in your shoes I'd put CentOS on the bare metal and run some other method of virtualization such as KVM or VirtualBox.

Anyway, in more direct response to your question, a google on "Hyper-V" tools centos-6 OR rhel6 OR "red hat enterprise linux 6" turns up hits such as this that make your approach sound potentially viable. A forum search on Hyper-V may also be useful, as may a google on hyper-v OR hyperv site:elrepo.org.