A. 1. make a full backup; 2. destry everyting on the 12h, pull out all drives and put new ones in; 3. format array, create new LUNs; 4. restore
B. 1. make a full backup; 2. turn rebuild priority to high; 3. for each disk, one by one: - pull ONE 4GB disk at a time; - insert one 18GB disk in; - wait until rebuild/balancing will complete; - check that 12h is healthy with 'arraydsp -a' command; - proceed with next disk; 4. turn rebuild priority back to low
A is fast but depends on backup/restore speed and not online; B is slow, but can be done online, although hosts can experience increased delays accessing 12h Eugeny
F/W upgrade is just about the only thing that can't be done online for the 12H, however, for 18G drives, you'll need to potentially change your fans. The 18G fan module has a plastic bubble over the fan icon, rather than the 7200rpm fan modules sticker label. Only 1 fan can be removed from the 12H at any one time.. and you've got 10mins or so before the array will shutdown due to fan removal.. ie insert the replacement soon after!
I am not certain if controller f/w needs to be upgraded to support the 18G drives, in either case if you've got HP56 up it'll certainly be okay.
Consider also changing rebuild priority, if a disk fails from now on, the rebuilds will take much longer with 18G drives......
Actually, the 18GB drives came in 2 "flavors" - 7200RPM and 10000 RPM. If the little fan labels on the drive modules are flat then it's a 7200 RPM drive; it the little fan labels are reaised bubbles then it's a 10K drive. If you have all 7200 drives then no fan module upgrades are necessary.
BTW, 36GB drive modules (all 10K RPM) are available as well.
I would go ahead and upgrade the firmware to HP62 - it's easy and you can do it yourself - and no data is lost.
Actually, the 18GB drives came in 2 "flavors" - 7200RPM and 10000 RPM. If the little fan labels on the drive modules are flat then it's a 7200 RPM drive; it the little fan labels are reaised bubbles then it's a 10K drive. If you have all 7200 drives then no fan module upgrades are necessary.
BTW, 36GB drive modules (all 10K RPM) are available as well.
I would go ahead and upgrade the firmware to HP62 - it's easy and you can do it yourself - and no data is lost.
Actually, the 18GB drives came in 2 "flavors" - 7200RPM and 10000 RPM. If the little fan labels on the drive modules are flat then it's a 7200 RPM drive; it the little fan labels are reaised bubbles then it's a 10K drive. If you have all 7200 drives then no fan module upgrades are necessary.
BTW, 36GB drive modules (all 10K RPM) are available as well.
I would go ahead and upgrade the firmware to HP62 - it's easy and you can do it yourself - and no data is lost.
Actually, the 18GB drives came in 2 "flavors" - 7200RPM and 10000 RPM. If the little fan labels on the drive modules are flat then it's a 7200 RPM drive; it the little fan labels are reaised bubbles then it's a 10K drive. If you have all 7200 drives then no fan module upgrades are necessary.
BTW, 36GB drive modules (all 10K RPM) are available as well.
I would go ahead and upgrade the firmware to HP62 - it's easy and you can do it yourself - and no data is lost.
Actually 18GB disk modules came in two flavors: 7.2K and 10K RPM. If the little fan labels on the drive modules are flat then they are 7200 RPM drives; if little bubbles then 10K RPM - just like the fan modules. If all of your replace 18GB drives are 7.2K then you ddon't need the hi-speed fan modules.
You might try to find 36GB drives.
I would upgrade firmware to HP62; it's very easy to do and no data is lost.
Eric, read notice from that page I mentioned. You need to change fans in order to have 10K disks in. And nothing more. Then proceed with disk replacement Eugeny
Thanks for all of the advise. Got the drives in and they are being installed one by one. What would be the most effective way to wipe these 4GB drive if I should want to resell them?
It will surely work if you'll wipe them in autoraid with format. But as soon as you're taking them out of it it's not an option. I'm not sure, but maybe these drives will fit into Jamaica's A3312A slots? Is it an option for reseller to wipe drives? Eugeny
One little note, sorry... These disks should be single ended - be aware of it. Do not connect them to FWD/HVD busses (only to SE or LVD ones, although connecting to LVD is not the best option) Eugeny
As soon as balancing will finish, you can proceed with another drive. Time depends on data actually allocated and to be spread into new added disk. This process is low priority one, and happens in background. Thus to speed it up try to quiesce I/Os to array Eugeny
According to hp, I don't have to wait for balancing to finish, but just have to wait for the array to rebuild. Balancing (as you said) will happen in the background and can be interrupted(?) if need be. Is there any indication that it is balancing? Also, hp said that when I pull a drive, I should wait until the array is done rebuilding before putting another drive in the array, because they have seen instances where putting another drive in the array "confuses" the array and causes you to loose all data! Has anyone seen this behavior?
Eric, I was wrong (better to note it later than never :o) ). Maybe meant one thing but wrote another. "As soon as balancing will finish" should be read as "As soon as REBUILD will finish". I do not remember such data loss cases, but it's good practice not to 'touch' array until it will rebuild. When you insert drive into array hotplug event causes SCSI bus to be reset. Normally, when all devices are behaving well, firmware should handle it correctly, include new drive into the disk set and rebuild to newly installed disk. I would follow this practice and waited for rebuild to complete, and then inserted all disks at once (in this case all the data will be rebuilt and have redundancy) Eugey
Well, I believe that HP doesn't suggest doing ANYTHING to the drives while either balancing or any state other than READY. It might be possible but definitely not recommended.
