Replacement of damaged SAS Drive, RAID 5 in Dell PowerEdge R720
Hi,
I have a Dell PowerEdge R720 with 3 600 GB SAS HD's RAID 5 in a PERC card and this morning I saw the orange alert light and in the display says that "there is an error in DIsk 0, check Drive" (not sure how much time the error is because I rarely enter to the site) so, I have a spare 500 GB SAS drive and I have some questions:
- Since the message in the display says: "check drive" (doesn´t says literally "replace the disk") it means there is something to do in order to fix the disk or it is inevitable to replace it?
- If there's nothing else to do to fix the disk, may I replace the 500GB HD in a 2 HD 600GB array?
- If yes, may I do that with the server running in a Windows session or I have to power off the server?
- If I have to power off the server, do I have to boot with the PERC software and put online the disk and rebuild the array?
- If yes, takes many time to rebuild the array? (I ask this to plan how much time the server will be offline and warn users) the total array space with the 3 600GB HD's was 1TB and there are 450GB used.
Thanks.
I have a Dell PowerEdge R720 with 3 600 GB SAS HD's RAID 5 in a PERC card and this morning I saw the orange alert light and in the display says that "there is an error in DIsk 0, check Drive" (not sure how much time the error is because I rarely enter to the site) so, I have a spare 500 GB SAS drive and I have some questions:
- Since the message in the display says: "check drive" (doesn´t says literally "replace the disk") it means there is something to do in order to fix the disk or it is inevitable to replace it?
- If there's nothing else to do to fix the disk, may I replace the 500GB HD in a 2 HD 600GB array?
- If yes, may I do that with the server running in a Windows session or I have to power off the server?
- If I have to power off the server, do I have to boot with the PERC software and put online the disk and rebuild the array?
- If yes, takes many time to rebuild the array? (I ask this to plan how much time the server will be offline and warn users) the total array space with the 3 600GB HD's was 1TB and there are 450GB used.
Thanks.
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UPDATE: For some reason the current windows server session closes and the backup was interrupted so I took advantage of that and removed the HD and plugged it again and for some minutes the display stops sending the error and goes blue and the blinking led of the HD goes green but few minutes later the error goes back in the display and the HD led goes back to orange.
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Just to add that replacing a 600GB disk with a 1TB would be ill advised even if they are both SAS because the 600GB ones will be 10 or 15K whereas the 1TB will be 7.2K "nearline" disk, you can replace it with a same speed 90GB one if you had one of them that's the same spin speed.
Do NOT replace the drive. it puts you at extreme risk of data loss. (Because you degrade the RAID, and just ONE unreadable block guarantees data loss)
So here is the smart move ... buy a replacement, then do an in-place upgrade from RAID5 -> RAID6. You have redundant data all of the time, and even if the drive eventually fails you still have redundant data.
(Besides, doing RAID5 is just nuts if your system is one where you are concerned about the inconvenience of down time, data loss, or rebuilding.
So here is the smart move ... buy a replacement, then do an in-place upgrade from RAID5 -> RAID6. You have redundant data all of the time, and even if the drive eventually fails you still have redundant data.
(Besides, doing RAID5 is just nuts if your system is one where you are concerned about the inconvenience of down time, data loss, or rebuilding.
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Thank you all,
I now have clear my doubts but Dell is giving me 3-4 weeks delivery time and in that time, surely I'll be back with you all to rebuild the array; hope I can keep open this ticket until the new disk comes.
I now have clear my doubts but Dell is giving me 3-4 weeks delivery time and in that time, surely I'll be back with you all to rebuild the array; hope I can keep open this ticket until the new disk comes.
If you'd rather not wait that long, there are resellers that could get it to you in a day or two:
http://www.xbyte.com/Items.aspx?key=fr&code=457&cat=P_D_SP_HDD&grp=2&fil5=5%3a106&fil2=2%3a457&incl_m=F
http://www.xbyte.com/Items.aspx?key=fr&code=457&cat=P_D_SP_HDD&grp=2&fil5=5%3a106&fil2=2%3a457&incl_m=F
3-4 weeks is a long time to be at risk, I'd rather fit a reconditioned one than wait that long.
I like dlethe's idea of migrating to RAID 6 although it's a bit slower but I'd still replace the predictive fail one after the RAID level migration was complete so that would mean buying two. At least they're 10 or 15K SAS so low chance of unrecoverable read errors compared to 7.2K disks so tolerable in RAID5.
I like dlethe's idea of migrating to RAID 6 although it's a bit slower but I'd still replace the predictive fail one after the RAID level migration was complete so that would mean buying two. At least they're 10 or 15K SAS so low chance of unrecoverable read errors compared to 7.2K disks so tolerable in RAID5.
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