topic Re: Autoraid in Disk Enclosures

Autoraid

ICT Infrastructure — Wed, 02 Apr 2003 08:07:01 GMT

Hello,

Yesterday we lost 2 disks in our Autoraid 12h. We have now lost everything on this autoraid. (is only a test server). When we left the site yesterday, the autoraid was initializing. Once this is complete, we want to remove 4 4.3gb disks and replace them with 4 9gb disks. (After which we will create the LUNS)Do we need to power off the 12h to swap the disks? Also when I go into SAM to look at "disk devices" SAM hangs. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Re: Autoraid

Eugeny Brychkov — Wed, 02 Apr 2003 09:48:52 GMT

I think it's better to replace disks offline, but you can do it online. After this, go through control panel menu and make sure there're at least 4 disks included into autoraid disk set. Then format disk array (again, using its control panel). Then include all other disks (if not included yet)
Eugeny

Re: Autoraid

Ivajlo Yanakiev — Thu, 03 Apr 2003 15:56:39 GMT

Yes you can exchange disk on line.
BUT you must do this
disk by disk !!!
And you must wait each disk
rebuild.
If you have not disk info to lost just replace disk.

Re: Autoraid

Vincent Farrugia — Fri, 04 Apr 2003 06:33:12 GMT

Hello,

You can do it with any method you wish. Since you have no data, you can't lose what you don't have :-)

So basically, putting disks online, offline, without rebuild or with... the important thing is that later you format the AutoRAID to include the new drives, that's it.

HTH,
Vince

Re: Autoraid

Vincent Farrugia — Fri, 04 Apr 2003 06:34:35 GMT

Re: Autoraid

Vincent Farrugia — Fri, 04 Apr 2003 06:39:43 GMT

Re: Autoraid

ICT Infrastructure — Fri, 04 Apr 2003 07:32:10 GMT

Hello everyone.
Thankyou for all your help!
An engineer attended site this morning and we have now recovered all the data. I know I should probably take the hint and leave it at that but I am trying to increase the capacity of the autoraid. In it there are 4 4.3gb disks. I would like to swap them for 4 9gb disks. Will it do an auto-include or will the autoraid panic because the disks are different capacities?

Re: Autoraid

Eugeny Brychkov — Fri, 04 Apr 2003 10:02:33 GMT

From the beginning you were telling that data is not valuable for you...
Ok. To save your data and increase capacity you should:
1. do full backup
2. pull ONE disk out of autoraid. Autoraid will flash yellow and display 'WARNING' on its LCD;
3. it will start rebuilding;
4. put new 9GB disk inside. Autoraid will detect it and will stop rebuilding. Instead, it will start balancing. Although, if autoraid will not detect new installed disk, go to its front panel menu and check if it was automatically included into disk set. If not, include it manually;
5. wait until autoraid become ready and green (until balancing will finish) and return to step 2 untill all 9GB disks will be in the autoraid.
If you'll install only one 9GB disk then it's possible that higher 5GBs of this disk will be 'lost' (will not be available to LUNs because there will be no redundancy for these 5GB space) or used for caching (for example). You need to install at least 2x9GB disks to allow autoraid to construct RAID1 allocating these higher 5GB disk space
Eugeny