What to do if 1 of 2 internal boot disks in HP SmartArray fails.

[Steve Post]

A very simple question.  What command do I run if one of my two internal boot disks fail?

These two disks are mirrored together via a HP SmartArray Raid controller.  It is raid type 1/0. 

When I look for the disk via ioscan, it is ONE disk. 

When I look via command:  saconfig /dev/ciss0,  it is TWO disks.

Now I bet a saconfig or sautil command of some format might be used to cut off the dead disk, or maybe that's automatic.

Maybe there is a command to hook in the NEW disk that has replaced the dead, removed disk.

It would be nice to know these two magic phrases BEFORE just a disaster occurs.   Oh sure.... I bet I can just pull out a disk and pretend I have a disaster to figure it out.  But if I do NOT figure it out.....it would be a REAL DISASTER.  

So what is the magic phrase?  open-sesame?    saconfig -stuff -wrkin -now?  

I just checked the man page on saconfig again.   And there is no command listed to unhook a dead disk and to hook in a replaced disk.  Perhaps it is automatic?  If so, you would think the man page might say something like that right?  

[Matti_Kurkela · Accepted solution]

With SmartArray hardware RAID controllers, the usual procedure is that the controller automatically cuts off the failed disk and lights up a LED to indicate which disk to replace. As soon as the failed disk is removed and a new disk inserted in its place, the controller will automatically start the recovery process. However, some (pre-SAS?) Integrity server models apparently don't have the circuitry to detect disk hot-swaps, so you'll have to explicitly tell the controller to have another look at the disks:

sautil /dev/ciss0 scan

As the controller detects that the failed disk has been replaced, you should get a drive status change message in syslog saying that the logical drive has transitioned from INTERIM RECOVERY to READY FOR RECOVERY. If auto-rebuild is enabled (by default it is), it will then immediately transition to RECOVERING.

If the auto-rebuild has been disabled or does not start for some reason, you can start it manually with:

sautil /dev/ciss0 start_recovery

You should have a look at the Knowledge Base document emr_na-c00858118-1 (for the earliest Integrity models with a SmartArray) and this URL (for the SmartArray SAS controllers):

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c02011726.pdf