Production RX8620 no internal RAID

[DELON KARRIM]

Hi Admins

We have an RX8620 server, pre-installed with Windows DataCenter and currently functioning in a production environment. Quite silly though was to only recently decide that this production box should contain some type of redundancy with a RAID 1+0 (mirrored srtiped) boot disk/os. Now we would like to install a 6402 (A9891A) raid controller. Problem being that we need to maintain our current boot disk but migrate it to a RAID 1+0 set. Is this at all possible? The boot disk is currently on the onboard SCSI controller.

This is what we had intended on doing: Insert 2 unused disks onto the 6402 and create a RAID 1+0. Then, insert BOOT disk into one slot and fail the other drive. inert a new disk to rebuild to.

Will this work?

[Torsten.]

All the SCSI controllers for internal mass storage resides on the MP card(s) and are "hard wired".

IMHO it's not designed for use with a raid controller (for internal mass storage!), because originally intended for use with hp-ux and volume managers.

But you can use an external RAID solutions or dedicated smart array controllers (also for external devices).

[DELON KARRIM]

Hi Torsten

The controller is able to have an internal config as well as external. We will use it in this instance for internal.

[Torsten.]

According to the quickspecs

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/north_america_07-2005/11849_na.PDF

your smart array controller A9891A is NOT supported for internal mass storage with windows. Only the 530x is.
But anyway, IMHO you can't use a non-raid disk with a raid controller without reformat because of different structures.

[DELON KARRIM]

Thank you very much for this insight.

[Torsten.]

You are welcome!

Regarding the smart array controller I expect this is not the final result, because some time (weeks/months) ago they were not supported at all to use with this kind of servers. Many many things are related to soft- and firmware and changing quickly.

I have never seen such big box with windows, but of course, the OS is supported and will guaranteed work.

Good luck!

[Robert Daly_2 · Accepted solution]

According to this, it will work for external but not internal drives; http://docs.hp.com/en/SM-20050510/raidcombinedsupportmatrix.htm

also, here's a Windows release notes written for your server that looks like it has some applicable information. Don't know how to do it myself,tho! ;-)
http://docs.hp.com/en/6725/5990-8259.pdf

[kris rombauts]

Delon,

as already mentioned, only the SmartArray 53xx is supported if you want to use the build in disk slots of the RX8620 for hardware raid, this is due to the type of disk backplane that is used.

Because the disk(s) are now connected to a "simple" build in SCSI controller (read non H/W RAID capable controller) their is no way to migrate them to a SmartArray and keep the data. If you really need hardware raid on the boot disks (which is a very good idea that i can only encourage to do btw) then this will be a reinstall job i am afraid.

The scenario you explained above in your first post in the forum will not work.


Hope this clarifies.

Kris

[DELON KARRIM]

Thank you all for your assistance.

[DELON KARRIM]

Rebuild coming along...