MSA 2012fc - Replacing Failed Disk

[AmC_1]

Hi Everyone,

Hopefully this is an easy question - I recently got an MSA 2012fc SATA enclosure, with 12 x 1TB disks installed.
As happens with disks, one of the 1TB SATA Drives failed after just a couple of weeks. I logged the call with HP and got a replacement couriered out.

Now this is my first experience with this type of enclosure and all other servers and SCSI enclosures I've used have simply rebuilt themselves (Raid5 by the way) when you slot in a hot swappable drive. I have replaced the dead drive and that's obviously not what happens with this enclosure.

Volume disk status is still listed as "Critical" and under Status/VDisk Status/Virtual disk drive list, one drive is listed as "Status: Down" and "Not Found".

If I click on "Enclosure View" I can see the disk that I replaced is there and is green in colour. Hovering my mouse over it, the disk is listed as "Part of VDisk: Available".

So I'd just like to check with you guys here.. Do I:

Click on Manage
Click on VDisk Configuration
Click on Expand Virtual Disk
Tick the box on the newly replaced disk (green)
Click on "Expand Virtual Disk"

Or is that not the right way to go about it? I've attached a JPG to show what I mean.

Logically I'm not actually expanding the virtual disk, I'm just replacing a drive! So I'm a little confused here :)

As I said, with all other drive arrays and DAS, the Raid5 just rebuilds itself the moment you slot in a new drive so I just really want to make sure here. Documentation seems a little on the light side as well!

Thanks in advance,

Andrew.

[TTr]

Normally the rebuild process should have started as you expected. Is there any activity on the disks indicating the disk is rebuilding? The vdisk will still show up as critical until the rebuild process is finished. One thing you DON'T want to do is to "expand dink". You can still call back on the call-ID that you have for the replaced drive and ask for help.

[AmC_1]

Hi TTr,

Thanks for the reply. Well to be honest I was a little puzzled that it didnt just start and I did think that "expand" could have really put things in a mess (hence my reluctance to just do it!).

Unfortunately this unit is at our co-location centre for disaster recovery so I can't easily look at it. I will see if the status changes but I'm guessing it wont!

Thanks for the reply - any other suggestions are welcome also!

[AmC_1]

Hi Guys,

Just having a look at this problem again - would adding a global spare to the VDisk make it kick in with a rebuild? It appears to be an available option (see attached).

Thanks to anyone who may have an idea on this one :)

[TTr · Accepted solution]

Which disk would you use for a hot spare? The one in "green" in the attachment" Isn't that the one you replaced? If you do that and the "sparing out" process starts, the vdisk will still be missing its original data disk that failed. There is something wrong here, the rebuild process should have started automatically. This is a new product from HP and it is not in line with the other MSA products and has a different management look. Is it possible that you manually have to step in and start the rebuild process? You should contact tech support about this and if needed have a field engineer go on site.

[AmC_1]

G'day TTr,

Thanks for the replies, they were much appreciated. In the end I did follow your advice and open a new case with HP. Funnily enough the solution was to do with adding a spare. Here are the steps I was given:

Click on Manage.
Click on Vdisk Configuration
Click on Add Vdisk spares
The new disk will be green with a tickbox available on it. Tick the box and click on "Add Vdisk Spares".

The status of the store should change to "Reconstruct: 0% Complete" and will take a good 5+ hours to rebuild the entire array.

So it appears that these units do not just automatically rebuild like the 70+ U320 SCSI servers and disk arrays I look after do!

Oh well it's not exactly difficult once you know how I guess. Thanks again for your advice - hopefully the above instructions will help someone else out. Mine is now rebuilt and is looking good.

Regards,

Andrew

[AmC_1]

See last comment - solution is basically to:

Click on Manage.
Click on Vdisk Configuration
Click on Add Vdisk spares
The new disk will be green with a tickbox available on it. Tick the box and click on "Add Vdisk Spares".

The status of the store should change to "Reconstruct: 0% Complete" and will take a good 5+ hours to rebuild.

[Bengt Sjoberg]

Just for anyone having similar problems. If the old disk is shown as "LeftOver" you first need to us Utilities MetaData Cleanup. Otherwise you can not set it as Spare disk.