Change order of disk in a MSA1000

[Patrick Terlisten]

Hello,

one of our customer wants to change the order of the disk in a MSA1000 (firmware v4.48). Now the disks are in this order:

Array A with two 72 GB HDDs in bay 1 and 3
Array B with two 72 GB HDDs in bay 2 and 4

The disk in bay 3 should be placed in bay 2, and the disk in bay 2 should be changed to bay 3.

The customer want´s to shutdown the MSA1000 and then change the order of the disks. I wouldn´t expect any problems. What do you mean? I would change the disks online, because the LUNs on both arrays are RAID 1+0.

Regards,
Patrick

[Steven Clementi · Accepted solution]

Patrick:

If you change the disks online, all that will end up happening is that the array would be degraded and then would rebuild when youput the disks back in, effectively giving you the same configuration.

If oyu do it offline, it should work... though I have never tried swapping disks around like this.

To be an even better configuration, you should put Array A disks in Bay 1 and Bay 8 and Array B disks in Bay 2 and Bay 9.

The MSA1000 disk shelf is split bus and has 2 channels. Part of the reason why HP decided to re-invent the MSA into the MSA1500.


Steven

[Uwe Zessin]

The MSA1000 does support "drive roaming" - you can move disks during power-off state and the array will recognize the new positions during the startup. I have tried it once and was almost successful - one disk drive did not have proper contact to the backplane and went into a failed state.

I did plug it back into the original slot, which was free (no amount of planning will ever replace dumb luck ;-) and let the rebuild process complete. Then I attempted another power-down, move, power-up sequence and was completely successful this time.

You CANNOT move disks online - as soon as you pull the disk it is faulted by the array controller.

[Patrick Terlisten]

Thanks for your answers. Grmpf... IMHO there are only two situation in which I shutdown a storage:

1. Emergency Shutdown
2. The customer got a new storage and the old one will be dismantled.

Okay. I will told my customer to change the disks offline and put them to bay 1,8, 2 and 9.

Thank you very much.

Regards,
Patrick

[Patrick Terlisten]

Thanks everybody! After the shutdown of the MSA1000 and the change of the disks, everything is up and running. :)

Regards,
Patrick

[Patrick Terlisten]

Problem solved.