topic Re: Moving Disks in Disk Enclosures

Moving Disks

romuald_1 — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 11:19:15 GMT

I am working with a MSA100 with one addition MSA30 attatched. Our raid set are currently accross one msa 30. I would like to move the disks around so that 2 disk from each ADG set oare on seperate shelves. It is my understanding that i should be able to move the disks around as needed and maintin the integrity of the array. Doe that hold true for moving disk from one shelf to the other or can you only move disks around in the same shelf?

Re: Moving Disks

Steven Clementi — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 11:31:55 GMT

Technically, all the shelves are on the same controller, just a different buss. Additionally, the first 7 drives in the MSA1000 are on BUS1 and the second 7 are on BUS2. Moving them to BUS3 and/or BUS4 should not be an issue.

I think the best think to do would be to map out the disks so you are sure which are where, make a move plan, BACKUP the data, shutdown and move disks, power back up.

Steven

Re: Moving Disks

romuald_1 — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 11:46:11 GMT

That is what I have done for the most part.
The only thin I did do was the power down and power up...

I have a ADG array on one msa30(box2) slots 3,4,9,10. I moved box 2 slots 3,4 to box 1 slots 9,10 (the other msa30) and the ACU shows them as not being part of the array. If I move them back to thier original slots the array rebuilds as it should. Do you think that powering down then moving the disks and the power up again would do the trick?

Re: Moving Disks

Steven Clementi — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 12:18:36 GMT

Moving the drive while the Array is "online" will not do anything but fail the drive. You can, however, pull 1 drive at a time and place it where you want it to be, then specify it as a hot spare drive for that array. The array should rebuild in that position. Once complete, do the next drive. Optionly, if you have some extra drives... install the extra drives first in the proper locations, set as hot spares and then pull one drive and let the array rebuild, then do the other drive.

I have not played with this much so I can not guiarantee the safeness of the proccedure. I think that if you powered down the array, moved the disks, then powered up again... the controller would rescan all the disks, find all the drives in the particular array and bring it online.

Steven

Re: Moving Disks

Uwe Zessin — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 02:34:48 GMT

I've once moved disk drives around in an MSA1000. After the power-up, however, on disk did not have proper contact to the backplane and was reported as failed.

The original bay was free (no amount of planning will ever replace dumb luck ;-) so I plugged it back, waited for the rebuild to completed.

Then I did another power-off, moved the disk again and after the next power-up everything was fine, phew...

Re: Moving Disks

romuald_1 — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 16:01:35 GMT

Thanks, I'll be trying it over the weekend.