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Perc 6i RAID 5 Disk Failiour

Ho Folks,

Just for peace of mind please.

I have a Dell Server with a PERC 6i RAID Card running RAID5 build

There are 4 used drives and one is a potential failure.
I have now added an additional drive in to the system and also assigned it to be the dedicated H/S for this Virtual Drive.

I can see it OK in Open Manager and its with in the Virtual Drive as H/S.

Do I need to leave this drive for a period of time before I use it.

If not then do I just take the failing drive offline and that will directly use the dedicated H/S automatically?

Thanks

davorin

I'm not 100% sure for PERC RAID controllers, but I expect that now your raid array has configured hot spare disk and it will wait for the disk in array to completely fail. When the first disk will fail, the raid controller will start to use hot spare disk, but I guess it will still not be happy and you will have notification of failed disk. I guess the array will expect from you to replace the failed disk with new one and if you have enabled "revertible hot spare" option it will rebuild the virtual disk with the new disk and put the hot spare disk again in hot spare state.

Look at page 37:
http://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_ser_stor_net/esuprt_dell_adapters/poweredge-rc-6i_User%27s%20Guide_en-us.pdf

At similar occasions, if the disk has predicted failure, I do not configure hot spare, but I just replace the failing drive and the raid array automatically rebuilds.

Gareth_Pointon

ASKER

Hi,

If I take the disk out with been supported via a H/S will it not take the RAID down?

Thanks

donnk

use dell openmange to tell the controller to use the drive or reboot and ctrl R to do the same in raid bios.

Gareth_Pointon

ASKER

To use the H/S drive ?

I have told it to use the spare drive a a dedicated H/S drive but all I have then it the ability to then take the faulty drive offline. I then get a warning saying this could loose data.

Thanks

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

donnk

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davorin

I'm not sure that I completely understand your last two comments.
In RAID 5 if one disk fails the raid array is still alive. If two disks are failed, then you loose your data.
When you replace the failed disk, the raid array will start rebuilding and until is not rebuild completely your data is vulnerable.
If you have Hot Spare drive, then RAID array will be rebuild automatically, without waiting for you to put in new drive. The rest you have in my first post.

BUT I guess here is a little bit of confusion about H/S. It can mean Hot Spare and Hot Swap.
Hot swap means that you can pull out drive while the server is running...
Perc 6i supports that.

After some more reading, regarding the current situation I would say that "Replacing member" procedure would be the best one.
For procedure look at the end of this article for "Replacing an Online Physical Disk":
http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/dept/cron/documentation/dell-server-admin/en/Perc6i_6e/chapterh.htm#wp1078519

Gareth_Pointon

ASKER

OK H/S = Hot Spare..

Thanks

donnk

its simple

pull dead drive
insert new drive

done.

PowerEdgeTech

Best method: Use the OpenManage software to force offline the pred fail drive ... now that you have a hot-spare, as soon as you do, it will begin to rebuild.