Raid Disk Replacement on ProLiant DL380 G5

[Saltshaker2112]

I apologize if this has been brought up before but I inherited a DL380 G5 server with Windows 2003 64 on it which has a P400 Smart Raid Controller. I was told it was build on a Raid 5 configuration but one of the 6 disks have gone bad. I can view the logs and Diagnostic Utility under the HP Array Tools but I cannot view the HP Array Configuration Utility (Version 7.85.18.0) because it only pulls up a IE page that cannot be displayed.

So my question is, assuming it is a Raid 5, can I do a hot swap on the bad drive? Or do I have to take the system down? Plus how will I know if the drive is rebuilt ? Is there a way to see the progress if I can do a hot swap? Thanks in advance.

Chris.

[Johan Guldmyr]

No worries - this is a place for questions.
These are kind of basic questions so I assume they're in here somewhere.
I suppose you could use the ADU to view the rebuild, but it's a lot nicer in the ACU. Your version of ACU may require an older version of IE. Maybe you could use the ACUcli version if you don't have an older version of IE (like version 6)?

If it is RAID5 then yes (you can view this in the ADU, on the logical drive under 'redundancy' or something like that) you can take out the broken disk and put in a replacement. It is hot swap.

[Saltshaker2112]

Thanks very much for the reply. Unfortunately the ACU does not display in IE ver 8. So I am not sure if that is the issue or not. But I can pull the ADU in IE8 which really only give me a report/overview of the array and I can save the report to a zip. Upon searching that, it does say under the LOGICAL DRIVE CONFIGURATION: Fault Tolerance Mode: Distributed Data Guard (RAID 5)  So I guess that answers my question there. But I am still curious why the ACU part of the utility will not pull up. Would upgrading to a later version help? If so can I just install the new version over the old or would I have to unistall first to be safe assuming that would not cause any harm to the system/array?

[Johan Guldmyr]

I suppose the later ACU work with IE 8 - maybe you should check the release notes for the ACU though just to be safe.

I searched through the release notes for ACU but couldn't find "IE " or internet explorer.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=3288134&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=1121516&swLang=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=1113#7832

That's where the downloads are.

If you have the PSP - proliant support pack - installed, maybe it's time to upgrade that (it includes the ACU, ADU, SMH, and more).

As to if it's best to uninstall/upgrade I believe the whole PSP uprgades have only been tested 2-3 versions back so if you're on too many behind, maybe it's best to do an uninstall.

[Saltshaker2112]

Thanks again..I updated the software and it looks like it works now so I should be good to go and be able to replace this bad drive on the fly over the weekend when the server has minimal load/use.

[Saltshaker2112]

So just to update here..I hot swapped the bad disc over the weekend. Not sure how long it took, I assume 12-18 hours for a 72 gb disc. When I came in this morning, it was still rebuilding but I logged off locally and went to log in remotely, checked the ACU and the status of the new disc is "OK"  However...now another disc is reporting that it is going bad with a red flashing light so basically I am in the same boat again!! Go figure...fortunately, I have another disc to replace it with but is this normal? Meaning, after a rebuild of one disc it sees another issue on another disc so soon? Granted , the discs are all the same age so I understand that they all could start to have issues but I just think it is a bit odd after all this...Just curious but any thoughts? Thanks.

[Johan Guldmyr]

I would be happy that it didn't fail while the other was broken/rebuilding. It's hard to tell if it's odd or not without knowing what kind of problem was reported by either of the disks. An ADU report might tell more but it's also a pain in the ass to go through. What you'd want to find are the ASC/ASCQ code that the disks sent.

[Ralph Frampton]

A 72GB HDD in my experience should re-build in less than a hour on this type system. YMMV & time required may depend on Rebuild Priority and/or HDD load by system/users.

Do you have the System Mgmt Homepage & Insight Manager Agents installed? If so then you can use that to go & check on the array controller / HDD status (eg. see whether the drive has actually failed, is only in Predictive Failure state, what status of Logical drive is, etc.).

RF