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Re: VA7400. Move disks between slots. Is it possible?

 
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Maxim Zhereshchin
Occasional Advisor

VA7400. Move disks between slots. Is it possible?

Hi Experts,

I have VA7400 with 10x36G disk and DS2405 with 5x73Gb disks. They working togehter as one Array.
I want to move disks from DS2405 to VA7400 and deattach DS2405. Could I do it without rebuild configuration ???

Thanks in advance,
Maxim
5 REPLIES 5
Uwe Zessin
Honored Contributor

Re: VA7400. Move disks between slots. Is it possible?

I have never tried it myself, but from some reading it looks like you can shutdown the array, power off, make the desired changes, power up again and the controllers should find the disks at their new positions.

But it's a good idea to make a full verified backup before you start.
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Vincent Fleming
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: VA7400. Move disks between slots. Is it possible?

It's not so simple...

The VA7400 has 2 parity groups - which are basically every other slot (even numbered slots are in one group, odd numbered slots in the other).

So, as long as you BE ABSOLUTELY SURE that get it right, you should be OK.

So, if the 5 drives in the DS2405 are slots 1-5, then you need to move the drives from slots 1, 3, and 5 into ODD numbered slots in the base unit, and the drives in slots 2 and 4 into EVEN numbered slots. DO NOT MIX THEM UP.

Verify all this with Command View - be SURE you note which parity group each of the drives is in.

I *highly* suggest a FULL BACKUP of the entire unit before attempting such an activity, as you can EASILY trash your configuration and lose all your data.

Another important item - Turn the array OFF before moving the drives, or it'll treat them as FAILED drives. If you remove 5 out of 15 drives live, you will probably destroy the RAID and lose your data.

Goodluck,

Vince
No matter where you go, there you are.
Uwe Zessin
Honored Contributor

Re: VA7400. Move disks between slots. Is it possible?

From what I have read it appears that the assignment of an even/odd slot to a redundancy group (RG) is done only during creation/expansion of the RG. Once a disk has been assigned to a specific RG it can be moved to a different slot. Of course, as you write, move only during POWER OFF(!).
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Maxim Zhereshchin
Occasional Advisor

Re: VA7400. Move disks between slots. Is it possible?

Thank a lot for advices.

I know about Redundace Groups, but didn't know how VA7400 recognize disks by slot number or by service information. As I see from answers by service inforation.

Thanks again,
Maxim
Uwe Zessin
Honored Contributor

Re: VA7400. Move disks between slots. Is it possible?

Don't know how the VA does it exactly, but a disk drive enclosure (JBOD) needs some bypass logic to cope with unoccupied slots. If the controller can control this bypass, it can selectively enable a slot, re-initialize the backend-loop and see if a disk drive comes up. That way it can build a table which slots are populated with disks.

Once a disk drive is assigned to an RG, the controller reserves some capacity for its own use - the meta data area. On all disks it stores configuration information, e.g. to which RG this disk belongs. On some of the disks it also stores the virtual mapping tables.
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