Question

Dell PERC 4e/Di RAID 5 - was Degraded, now no boot.

Asked by: boris711

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2800, w/ RAID 5, running on PERC 4e/Di controller. The server locked up, had to do a hard boot. (Held in Power button until shutdown)  Restarted server, got error, on POST, that RAID was Degraded.  But was able to bypass the error and boot into Win Server 2003.  Ran latest Dell PE Diags, all items on related SCSI bus passed diags, including controller.  Rebooted Server. Went into LSI Util (vintage ~2005), selected View/Add to verify config, I don't believe I changed or saved anything.  Everything looked normal, restarted unit again.  "Degraded" error, on POST, was gone, but reboot failed throwing "can't find file" in Windows\SYSTEM directory error.  Rebooted again, and ran LSI Util to Check Consistency, received "Fixed", but machine still fails to boot with same error Win related error.

Is there anything I can do recover original RAID config, before taking on the task of rebuilding the server from backup?

TIA!
Jeff

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Asked On
2008-12-30 at 07:34:49ID24015698
Topics

Computer Servers

,

Microsoft Operating Systems

,

Microsoft Server

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
4

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Answers

 

by: dkumar82Posted on 2008-12-30 at 08:00:01ID: 23263442

Better contact DELL support, if it is a Critical Server.

 

by: BembiPosted on 2008-12-30 at 08:08:04ID: 23263505

So, fist at all, if you have a degraded RAID5, at least one drive has an error and is out of sync. If automatic rebuid is enabled, the controller should try to rebuild in the background. But rebuild can only work, if all drives are healthy or if you have a spare disk, which can be used.

The first time, your system starts in degraded mode, maybe rebuil dwas started in the background (the disc access is slow in that condition).

If you have changed something in the setup, you may have destroyed your Raid configuration. If not, everything should look as expected, the controller should show all existing drives and the status. It may be, that you have reset the degraded state using one of your utilities, nevertheless the Raid has an error. This may produce the error as the boot sequence is not able to load a file from the position, where it is expected. But it can also point to the situation, that the Raid configuration is destroyed or files are damaged during your operations.

If a RAID fails, at least one of the drives have a problem. If you try to rebuild a RAID onto a damaged drive, the result depends a little bit, how the controller can handle this. It should happen, that the controller falls back into degraded mode.

If your data is important, you should make drive images from each drive to avoid loosing data, which may recoverable. Also I would test all drives (all manufacturers have DOS tools for that) to find out, if any of the drives are really damaged. Make sure, alle drives are within the same slot as they where before testing them.

If you can find a damaged drive, you can try to replace the drive and to start a new rebuild. Also the server should start without the damaged drive in degraded mode.

If more than one drive has errors, you may have a lager problem. If no drive shows an error (also using the long drive tests, which will take 1 or 2 hours to run), check all cables for the drives.

Independend from the way of recovery, make sure that all drives are healthy, otherwise you will run into this situation again.  

If the Raid is fully operational (no error and rebuild) and you still get a read error during boot, I would say that this is a sign for data corruption. You can try to copy the files again into the system using the repair console, but you never can be sure, if something esle is damaged ord not.

 

by: homergfunkPosted on 2008-12-30 at 12:52:29ID: 23265944

One thing I would like to add is you may consider going to RAID 10 in the future. It is considerably more reliable and many situation like this can be adverted by using it. The only downside is you need at least 4 HDDs to make it function and it uses more space than RAID 5.

 

by: boris711Posted on 2008-12-31 at 17:11:44ID: 31530107

Thanks for the help Experts.  I did call Dell.

As it turns out, there was an error with the RAID array, but that pretty much fixed itself, just by going into the LSI Util.  The entire SCSI Bus passed Dell PE Diags multiple times and passes, both from within Win Server 2003 and using the bootable CD version.  Seems that my main problem was OS corruption, and every time I tried to boot from restored data, even from a month ago, the machine locked up with a blank screen.  It's a bummer that I can't just do a restore now, because it would seem that I've unknowingly been backing up corrupted data for some time now.  I have to rebuild the OS and Apps, and afterward restore just data.  I'm glad I didn't have big plans for New Year's Eve, and that my wife is an understanding soul.  

Thanks again, and Happy New Year to you and yours.

Jeff  

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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