Removing Hot Spare

1st question is why would you not want a hot on-line spare in your server?

The only way to remove the spare permanently is to brak the raid and re-create it.  Alternatively, you could just not have it in the server but I would not recco doing eiter, especially since you have it already

BIOS would be a better option
 
1. Open RAID utility
2. Remove Hot Spare
3. Power down system.
5. Power up system and rebuild RAID configuration

There are 2 arrays on my server; a RAID5 with Hotspare (4 disks), then 2 disks in a Mirror.
I need to expand the Mirrored drive.  The server only has room for 6 disks, all of which are in use.  The disks in the Mirror are 300GB SCSI disks, I believe 300GB is the largest SCSI disk available and therefore I can't simply upgrade the 2 mirrored disks.  I only have a small budget and therefore need to work with the server I have.  As far as I can see, my only real option is to replace the hotspare disk with another 300GB disk, then replace the mirror with a RAID5 accross 3 disks.  I lose the hotspare, but I don't have a lot of options.  Any better ideas appreciated.

Cheers
John

John

I understand why you want the hotspare out, and I don't see why this would not work. You can do it either in Dell Server Administrator or in the RAID BIOS. Removing the hotspare won't affect the RAID 5 (unless one of your RAID drives is broken already), and rebuilding RAID won't be needed.

It would be a good idea to download the latest version of Dell OpenManage Server Administrator, if you don't have it yet.

Another idea would be to make one big RAID5, and keep one hot spare. You would have 5 discs in RAID 5, meaning a net capacity of 4 drives. Two RAID 5 of each 3 drives also gives a net capacity of 4 drives. So you would not lose any space, and have the advantage of a hot spare.

However, there is a little bit of speed penalty (your OS will also need to be on the RAID 5), and it involves a lot more work. You will need something like Symantec Ghost and make an image of the data, either over the network or to an external USB drive.

Thanks for the ideas.  Just to confirm, if I remove the hotspare from Array 1, with the intention of replacing the disk and adding it to Array 2, will I definitely need to rebuild Array 1?

Thanks

Thanks to everyone for your advice.