Smart Array Disk Swap

[Marc Besson]

I have a DL 370 with a Smart Array 4200 with 6 physical disks.

Two are allocated to a raid 1 array
Four are allocated to a raid 5 array

For an urgent deployment I need to temporarily reallocate this server.

My idea is to remove the actual 6 disks, replace them with new one and rebuild the server.

Nevertheless after this temporarily period, I need to restore the server to its original configuration.

What will happens if I just swap back the disks and place again the original one in the array. Will it boot again or will all the data be lost.

Thanks for your answers

[Mark Smith_20]

Marc,

If you remove ALL of the disks attached to this controller (all at the same time) and then later add them back (all at the same time) in the same order then the machine will run just like it did.

[Michael Steele_2]

Although the disk data and LVM header will still be on the disks the device names from the server side will all be changed and you'll have to vgexport/vgimport with the '-s' option to recover. Using 'vgexport' with the -s' option vgexport will send out a request for all the disks to answer back and join their old volume groups. Once you have the map created vgimport with '-s'.

ll -d /dev/vg##/group (* copy done minor number 0x0#0000 *)
vgexport -p -v -s -m /tmp/mapfile /dev/vg## (* -p for preview, -v for verbose, -m for map *)
vi /tmp/mapfile
vgexport -v -s -m /tmp/mapfile /dev/vg## (* without -p will delete the vg from /etc/lvmtab *)
mkdir /dev/vg##
mknod /dev/vg##/group c 64 0x0#0000 (* use notes from first step *)
vgimport -v -s -p -m /tmp/mapfile /dev/vg## (* display will scroll across screen - Again, -p for preview *)