Gfmotz
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Dell SAS Raid won't rebuild
I have a system with a Dell SAS5ira raid card setup with a RAID 1. One of the drives failed and I replaced it with one of equal size. The raid storage manager sees the drive in the physical drive tab, but I does not automatically rebuild the array. According to the manual, the rebuild should start automatically. Before I replaced the drive that rebuild did try to start with the bad drive, but failed. Is there any way to force the controller to rebuild, or am I missing some step in the process?
David
You can go to the BIOS and tell it to force a rebuild, or if you are running windows, download the PERC utility from the dell site, and then you can tell it to rebuild via that utility
ASKER
I have the Dell SAS RAID Storage Manager installed, but I can't find any place in there to tell it to rebuild. I tried looking for that PERC utility but I could not find it, do you have a link available?
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ASKER
The SAS5 ir only support two drives, so it therefor does not support hot spare drives.
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/storage/RAID/PERC5/en/UG/HTML/chapterh.htm
RAID Configuration and Management
Dell™ PowerEdge™ Expandable RAID Controller 5/i and 5/E User's Guide
Also see http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/storage/Storlink/H200/en/UG/HTML/driver.htm for download and installation instructions.
RAID Configuration and Management
Dell™ PowerEdge™ Expandable RAID Controller 5/i and 5/E User's Guide
Also see http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/storage/Storlink/H200/en/UG/HTML/driver.htm for download and installation instructions.
ASKER
None of the software I found is supported in my environment. Some additional info
The server is server 2003 R2 standard
I currently have a storage manager installed (Dell SAS RAID Storage Manager - V2.16-00
The second drive is showing Unconfigured & Good under Physical drive state. I feel that if I can somehow "assign" that drive to the raid, it will start to rebuild. Nothing in the storage manager seems to give me this option.
I did go into the boot time menu and I don't seem to have the option to force a rebuild there either.
The server is server 2003 R2 standard
I currently have a storage manager installed (Dell SAS RAID Storage Manager - V2.16-00
The second drive is showing Unconfigured & Good under Physical drive state. I feel that if I can somehow "assign" that drive to the raid, it will start to rebuild. Nothing in the storage manager seems to give me this option.
I did go into the boot time menu and I don't seem to have the option to force a rebuild there either.
Change it to a hot spare then yank it out and put it back in. This usually works. (all while the system is online, no rebooting). If that does not work, then you will have to put the disk behind a non-raid controller and then zero out the first 4 MB or to clear the metadata, then stick it in.
ASKER
As I mentioned before the raid controller does not support hot spare. Won't clearing out the metadata cause me to lose the drive data? I would rather do this non-destructively if at all possible.
Clear out the metadata on the NEW drive you are adding. There is no data on it other than metadata, correct? But you can't do this using that RAID controller. You have to do it with a JBOD controller
ASKER
Apologies for the confusion, I can try that when I am onsite next time, it should be within the week.
No prob, Gfmotz. It is absolutely critical to make sure we are on the same page whenever any destructive actions are taken.
I strongly recommend taking a backup immediately. You have a much higher risk of an unrecoverable read error on the surviving disk than a catastrophic disk failure. Also remember that this hardware is ancient and both disks probably went in service the same day, have exactly the same I/O load, same manufacturing batch, same part number, same everything ..
Don't be surprised if the only remaining disk decides to die at any moment. Personally due to the fact of above, and the expected age (well beyond manufacturer's warranty), I recommend creating a full bootable backup and just replace BOTH disks on a restore at the same time.
I strongly recommend taking a backup immediately. You have a much higher risk of an unrecoverable read error on the surviving disk than a catastrophic disk failure. Also remember that this hardware is ancient and both disks probably went in service the same day, have exactly the same I/O load, same manufacturing batch, same part number, same everything ..
Don't be surprised if the only remaining disk decides to die at any moment. Personally due to the fact of above, and the expected age (well beyond manufacturer's warranty), I recommend creating a full bootable backup and just replace BOTH disks on a restore at the same time.
ASKER
Shows what I know, it turns out it does support hot spare. I got into the boot time menu and selected it as hot spare and boom, the rebuild started without a problem. Thanks!