Upgrading a full Autoraid 12h

[Terry Kummell]

Hi Everyone,

We have an Autoraid 12h attached to a K570. It is fully populated with 4 18Gb and 8 4.3GB drives. Assuming that I can get the bean counters to approve the funds, what would be the best method for removing and replacing 4 of the 4.3GB drives with 18GB replacements?

What sort of backup do I need? The core operating system directories do not reside on the autoraid. I am assuming that I can do a complete backup of everything in the autoraid, change the drives, do some sort of configuration step (the magic happens here), extend some of the directories, and then do a restore. Is my 'plan' even close to being correct?

Thanks in Advance,

Terry Kummell

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi Terry:

Actually, this couldn't be simpler. Make sure that you have 'Auto Include' enabled on your array so that the array will recognize and include new disks. I also suggest that you always have 'Active Hot Spare' and 'Auto-Rebuild' enabled.

1) Back up

You can do the remaining step while on-line; I have done this several times in a full production environment with absolutely no problems.

2) Remove ONE of the disks; wait a few seconds; insert ONE new disk in it's place.
The rebuild will start. You can insert the new disk even if the rebuild has started. WAIT FOR THE LIGHT SHOW TO FINISH. i.e. Let the rebuild complete. This may take several hours.

3) Repeat Step 2 until all the disks have been replaced.

[Hartmut Lang]

I would suggest that use use SAM to exclude the disk from the Autoraid first. You will get a warning, if excluding will result in loss of data.

After the disk is excluded, you can savely remove it physicaly. I'm not shure, but maybe an excluded disk is also marked by a lit LED.

[Insu Kim]

1. Make a full backup for data residing on AutoRAID.

2. Delete LUN(s) configured on AutoRAID step by step using front panel or SAM.

3. Remove a 4.3GB disk and wait for a few seconds and remove another 4.3 GB disk and wait,,, repeat this procedure until you unplug all the 4.3GB disks on the AutoRAID.

4. Insert a 18.8GB disk and wait for a few seconds, probably, LED on a disk module will be on and off shortly and keep going on adding 18.8GB disk modules.

5. Create a LUN or LUN(s) on the AutoRAID using either front panel or SAM.

6. Create a Volume group.

-Actually, what Stephenson said is something in the service manual but it takes a lot of time so I prefer use this way sometimes.
It's easiest and fastest on the assumption that you make a full backup for AutoRAID.

Hoep this helps,

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

you may prefer to leave auto include off.

If you insert a disk during an autoraid normal day of work, the data migration onto the new disk will take a lot of Controller CPU/Disk IO and perf will suck.

You might want to include with arraymgr -i off
turn auto include off
and run this later on at night with the at command or cron...

arraycfg -D A5 -a

where A5 is the disk you want to add

Later,
Bill