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steve352

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Live SCSI Hardware Swap on Windows Server 2003 SP2

One of the servers that I administer is running Windows Server 2003 SP2 and the robotic tape drive that is attached via SCSI (LVD) has failed. I have access to a replacement tape drive (also SCSI LVD) that I would like to use to replace the failed unit. Unfortunately, the server with the failed tape drive is also a primary domain controller. Normally, I'd wait and shutdown the server during off hours, remove the failed unit, attach the replacement, then reboot the server. Unfortunately, in this case, time is of the essence and I was hoping to be able to swap out the failed unit with the replacement without shutting down the server during regular business hours. If I was dealing with USB drives or hot swappable SCSI HDs I wouldn't be worried about a live swap. Has anyone done a live swap like this and did it work? Did you swap the units or just add on the replacement unit by cabling it in to the failed unit (I'm pretty sure the SCSI bus is functional) using a different SCSI id? We run Backup Exec so I'm thinking if I hot swap, I'll just run the BE new hardware wizard to pickup the replacement.  Any advice on this would be appreciated.
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David
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The SCSI spec allows you to just hot swap things in and out as much as you want, but since it is a parallel bus then you will get a bus reset.  This is *supposed* to work just fine and worst case whatever target was talking to the initiator at the time will detect the reset, and retransmit.

But this isn't always the case.  So bottom line, it is supposed to work, but I've seen drivers that do not do their job and not reinitiate the I/O.  I've also seen software that won't reinitiate the I/O as well.

If you have swapped out HDDs on this same controller w/o any issues then that is a great indication that you will be fine.  The process and I/O and reset constraints are the same whether it is HDD or tape.

So bottom line, if you have swapped out disks before on this config w/o any issues, then you have the same probability that you can swap out a tape w/o any issues. If you have never hot swapped a disk, wait for a downtime window.
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Member_2_231077

Really depends on whether the disks are on the same controller since it might be terminating the bus. Is it a tape library or just a drive? Maybe if it's a library the drive is hot-swappable.
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The tape library/drive  is on a separate SCSI controller  (Adaptec 29320lpe card) from the SAS drives.
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David
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