Booting from drive other then First?

[Bogdan R.]

I have a Proliant 5500. I just got two new 10Gb 10kRPM drives for it. I would like to set them up as a Mirrored RAID setup. However I have read that the array will boot from first disk ONLY. Does that mean that if I have RAID 1 (disk 1 and 2) and disk one dies I would not be able to boot the system even though disk 2 will still be good. Any way to fix this if this is so?

Thank you for the help.

- Bogdan

[Igor Karasik]

Do you have SmartArray controller on this server? If yes - you can create hardware RAID-1 and in this case not matter which disk failed (disk 1 or disk2) - you will able to boot the system.
If you don't have SmartArray controller you will create software RAID-1.
I didn't have much experience with software RAID, but IMHO with software RAID you will able to boot the system too, even if disk 1 failed. I think problem with software RAID if disk 1 failed was in NT4 time and it is solved in windows 2000.

[Bogdan R.]

I have SmartArray Controller (3600 I think). Thanks for the info. I was wondering, is it possible to then tell the controller to boot any of the Arrays. I have my original drive in bay 1 (array A). I installed 2 new drives in bays 5 and 6 because of size (RAID-1 array D). Can I tell the Controller to boot from array D not array A. I looked all over in the SmartArray utility and can not find that feature. Is there such a feature, or do I have to do it in another way.

Thank you very much,

- Bogdan

[Igor Karasik]

Bogdan, so you have SmartArray 3200 controller.
AFAIK, there is no way to boot from array D with SmartArray 3200 controller. The array controller will only boot from array A.

[Bogdan R.]

Ok, last stupid question. Is there a way to make my Array D and Array A and A D. Swap them that is, without deleting and rebuilding the other 2 Arrays?

Thanks,

- Bogdan

[Bogdan R.]

Ok, last stupid question. Is there a way to make my Array D an Array A and A D. Swap them that is, without deleting and rebuilding the other 2 Arrays?

Thanks,

- Bogdan

[Igor Karasik · Accepted solution]

Bogdan,
the only way I see here to set array D as array A without deleting and rebuilding the other 2 Arrays is physically remove drives from Array A, B and C, delete these Arrays from Array configuration utility -
so Array D automatically will be set as Array A and you server will boot from Array A. Now you can put drives from Array A, B and C back (drive order must be same !), SmartArray will read Array configuration from drives and you will see your arrays back.
IT IS VERY DANGEROUS WAY and I do not recommend it. You must exactly understand what you do because you can meet many failures on the way and you must have full server backup! I also not 100% sure this method will work.
Again, I do not recommend this method for production server.
See this thread as well
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=43618

and wait for other ITRC members suggestions.

[Bogdan R.]

Igor,

Thank you, I think I will try that method after backing as much as possible of the system.

- Bogdan