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Re: NETRaid Errors

 
Ed Williams
Occasional Advisor

NETRaid Errors

Hi,

Is there anyway to get NetServers or NetRaid on LH4r and above servers to tell you when there is media errors or failures. I have had a server disks come up with media erros and go down and its not flashing any light on the front or anything ?? Only know due to NT eventlog

Thanks

Ed
5 REPLIES 5
e4services
Honored Contributor

Re: NETRaid Errors

yes. There is an alarm sound that can be set with in the controllers BIOS. This must be disabled currently
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Ed Williams
Occasional Advisor

Re: NETRaid Errors

Hi,

Thanks - Im more intreasted in having a SMS or pager or even message to my desktop. As my NETRaid dont have the sound option..

Thanks

Ed
kris rombauts
Honored Contributor

Re: NETRaid Errors

Ed,

yes , embedded Netraid cards like in the LH4 don't have the alarm/buzzer build in, however the alarm only goes off when their is a real disk failure already ,it won't sound when their is a media issue detected.


The Netservers have management agents (TopTools agents) that do send out SNMP traps when i.e. a media error is detected or a disk failed.
The only way to get emails or pages send out is by using some management software that you can configure to do such action if certain SNMP traps are received (i.e. HP SIM can do this and is a free product).
Check this url:

http://h18013.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/hpsim/index.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN


Other then that you can get emails or pages for certain events but you need a remote control card in the LH4 (TopTools Remote Control Card) which is a separate PCI card and was a optional product at the time.


Pls keep in mind that disks can have a certain number of media defects and as long as they are within the spec's of the disk drive, the Netraid controller will not flag the disk as 'bad' yet and won't flash the amber or red led on the drive, this is normal. If you do see a trend and frequent media errors then it's time to pro-active replace the disk before it breaks completely.

Pls also note that , if not already, it is strongly advises to run the consistency check on the array. This is done via a service that scans the whole array weekly (by default) and allows to timely recalculate eventual parity errors in your raid 1 or raid 5 array.

Check here for downloading the Netraid Monitor service:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=51917&prodTypeId=329290&prodSeriesId=51915&swLang=13&taskId=135&swEnvOID=226




HTH

Kris

Ed Williams
Occasional Advisor

Re: NETRaid Errors

Hiya,

Thanks this is useful - THe server died last week - with two disk with media errors in the edn - but even when the died. There NetRaid error lights didnt light up Red or Orange nor did the LH4 Managment Console LCD show lights up ?? That was a itreastig concern. I am intreasted in the TopTools cards - have been looking at these.

We are a Edu/Charity org and Im trying to make these server last long - we have been running on PII450 512K Cache and now upgrade them to PIII 550 2MB to Windows 2003. ;)

Just a bit worried about the light thing thou.

Thanks

Ed
Sean T. Craig
Honored Contributor

Re: NETRaid Errors

Hi Ed,

There is another possibility here. If the drives are not configured in a RAID array, the LED won't turn red upon failure. The LH4 has an integrated controller that can be configured as a NetRAID or Symbios SCSI. When a drive LED turns red, it's not because the drive failed, it's because the logical array member failed. The LED's aren't even on the drives themselves but on the backplane and are controlled by the controller itself.

If you have drives with Media Errors, I recommend running a media verify routine from the Symbios SCSI configuration utility. It will scan the surface area of the disks and attempt to remap the data when it finds one.

Lastly, if the drives ARE configured on the embedded NetRAID and the drives failed, there is a condition where, when a drive fails to spin up, it locks up the slot and the controller can't change the condition of the LED's. You can usually identify this as 2 solid green LED's on the drive. When the drive first power's up, both LED's go on but when it complete's the spin-up, the activity LED goes off. If reseating the drive doesn't correct the condition, then the drive is dead.

Hope this is useful,

Sean T. Craig Sr. C.E.T., M.C.P.

I am King...of my apartment.