swaping drives with 5300 controller

[Ayman Altounji]

We just bought a bunch of new ml530's that came with 5300 controllers. It appears in the documentation, and we have not been able to successfully do so, that you cannot replace an existing 5300 controller with another 5300 controller. We have tried to swap drives from one server to the next, each server with their own 5300 controller. Our question is "Is this a problem with the 5300 controller". Do we need to move the drives and the controller? And if so, what if a controller fails, can you simply swap it out with another 5300 controller? Is there something that we are just missing in our process?

Thanks.

[Ayman Altounji]

I am not sure what you are talking about. In the smart array 5300 user guide section 3-4 page (40 of 199) it states that you can move entire arrays etc but they must be intact ie not failed drives etc, also you may want to veryify all firmwares are at same rev level and try again.

[Ayman Altounji]

If the controller fails or is replaced, you must move the cache card to the new controller. This is the same procedure for all the SMART controllers.

[Ayman Altounji]

Cache card? Pardon? Whenever I replace a controller it's the whole kit-and-caboodle. How would you do this on a 431, 221, or 2sl card which is all one piece?

[Ayman Altounji]

I have discovered an issue with moving disk arrays from one server to another. We perform the process of swapping out entire chassis when a server has a hardware fault. On older models of server you could move disks between two identically configured servers without problems. The scenario I have found is detailed below using DL580's and 5300 controllers.

Server A which is configured with a two disk mirror and has an intermittent hardware problem. I want to replace the whole server with server B of exactly the same configuration i.e I want to move the two disks into the new chassis. The process I would follow would be to smartstart server B with two blank disks in it and run the ACU to configure the mirror. On older server you could then simply move the disks from server A into this chassis and it would work (the array config is held on the controller). With the 5300 I have found that if you do this then you get an error on server B stating that the drives have changed and the server will not load the OS (it says that it is missing). The controller knows that the drives are not the ones which it had prior to the swap and won't boot off them.

The workaround I have used is to run smartstart on server B and delete the array configuration using the ACU. When you then move the disks from server A to server B (using the same slots) the array configuration automatically loads and the server boots without having to run the ACU again. Why????

I assume that the controller saves a backup copy of the array config to the disks and loads it back into its memory from there. If the server detects a different set of disks in it's own copy of the config to the one saved on the disks it won't boot from them. That is why it must be deleted first. Can anyone confirm this?