exchange restore - emergency

for some reason, DPM wont work to restore...

What's the Emergency?

With RAID 5 and one disk down, the server should still be functioning happily, if not a little slow.

Replace the failed HDD and all should be well.

it is a 3 disk raid 5, we ordered the hot swapable disk, the system just does not take it.

and the mailbox server is very slow now, and we do not want to take the risk to reboot the server.

What make / model of server do you have?

What type are the HDD's?

HP server DL 380...the original disk is WD, the replacement disk is seagate. this might be the reason...

I wouldn't be personally concerned as you have an HP server.  As mentioned by dlethe, as long as the drive you replace the failed one with is the same size or larger, it should accept it and rebuild the array.

What Generation of DL380 is it and are the disks SATA or SCSI?

so, you mean if i physically COPY these storage group/DB folders, files and keep them in the same structure.
after i rebuild the array - the new D driver, - i COPY these files back.
restart the exchange related service

can i successfully re-mount the database, or saying restore the exchange server?

thanks.

sorry, it is DL 180g6

Yes, but rebuilding the array is not destructive .. the controller stays online, your data stays on line.  I"d only be concerned if you went out to a local PC store and got a retail desktop drive, instead of the nearline SATA disks with the HP firmware on them.

(But if no backup, again, prioritize doing that first. )

You may also have to get a Battery Backed Write Cache to be able to add the Hot-Spare Drive, but it will be money well spent IMHO.

Do you have the P410 controller?

yes, we will buy couple new hard drives and raid 5 as well.
the only problem here i aam not quite sure, - i used to restore exchange server from some backup software - either DPM or backupexec.

but this time, we do not have the option. all i can do might be copying the files out.
that is why i am asking: disable exchange service - dismount- copy out - redo D drive - copy back - enable exchange service, remount DB?

please confirm above steps will work.

thanks.

AD is on a different server -

updates: after reboot, the server takes the new drive and the array is rebuilding.
for DPM server, also got it to work now, it is the disk space issue caused the unsuccesful backup.

we are back to good shape...thanks guys.