Predictive failure rebuild activation in Smart Array

[chuckk281]

A question on how the Smart Array controller works in the ProLiant Gen8 servers from Ruck:

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Dear Expert,

For predictive failure rebuild activation in Smart Array Gen8, the default mode is when drive failure.

Need your input what’s the reason behind or Pros and Cons of this two modes (Predictive failure / Drive failure activation)?

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Reply from Rene:

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Rebuild on drive failure on Smart Array controllers has been the default behavior since the dawn of x86 servers.  “Most” customers do not like it when we change default behaviors.  The reasoning was that simple.  Maybe we will change the default in the future, but I still find folks that don’t even know that Predictive Spare Activation exists.

If you don’t know about Predictive Spare Activation.  It protects data by automatically servicing a predictive failure drive without degrading the fault tolerance of the RAID logical drive(s). The drive can report a predictive failure before an actual drive failure occurs.  Predictive Spare Activation automatically copies the data from a predictive failure drive to a global spare drive. The copy operation reduces the time before the spare drive becomes active. After the copy completes, the predictive failure drive is marked as a drive failure. You can then remove it from the RAID set for servicing.

In practice, we also know that not all drives will enter a predictive failed state before actually failing.

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