topic Re: Smart Array Question in ProLiant Servers (ML,DL,SL)

Smart Array Question

Ugo Bellavance (ATQ) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:18:49 GMT

Is is possible to restore RAID metadata from drives?

Example: You have a DL380 G5 with a P400 and the onboard NICS stop working. Since this always happen a a bad time, you take another DL380 G5 with a P400 from your lab, you take the hard drives you had in the broken one and put them back in the working unit and it boots ok?

Thanks,

Ugo

Re: Smart Array Question

Torsten. — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 21:21:51 GMT

You are talking about "drive roaming". If you take out all (!) the drives from a RAID set and put them to another server, the controller will get the configuration from the disks and can now work with this setup.

Re: Smart Array Question

Jimmy Vance — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:48:39 GMT

As Torsten has already confirmed, you can move the drives to another system and they will boot just fine. Make sure the P400 are at the same firmware levels. Firmware mismatch can cause problems if the existing system has newer firmware than the replacement.

You could also have networking issues depending on your OS. Some OS's base network setup on MAC address and you may need to make adjustments.

Re: Smart Array Question

c.wolf — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 06:44:50 GMT

If you have a BBWC battery backed write cache, it's better you put it with the drives in the new server. If server power lost, then the remaining data are stored in this battery backed cache modul. Normaly hold the data more than 2 days.