Cannot access original drive data when moved to 5302 controller

[Jim Maxwell]

I am upgrading storage on a dl380 proliant.

I have a 4354 shelf with 10 36GB drives (5+5) connected via ports 3 and 4 on a smartarray 5304 controller.

I have another 4354 shelf with 10 72 GB drives (5+5) which I have swapped for the first shelf and I have successfully restored the last good backup from tape to the new array.

I have reconnected the old shelf and drives to another proliant dl380 server on the same network via a smartarray 5302 controller on ports 1 and 2 (naturally)

When I boot the second server with the old array connected it warns me that the array configuration is wrong as the array was originally connected to ports 3 and 4 and is now connected to ports 1 and 2 and asks me to correct the problem.

When I connect to the 5302 controller with the array diagnostic utility or the array configuration utility they see the controller o.k. and all the disks but no array is defined and no logical drives are seen - just the 10 physical drives split 5+5 across the two scsi channels.

The original logical arrays were configured as two RAID5 volumes.

How do I get access to the original data on the new controller ?

I do not have another 5304 controller so is there some way to force the 5302 controller to ignore the old channel assignments as recorded by the drives (channels 3 and 4) and use the new controller channels instead (channels 1 and 2) without losing my original data ?

An urgent response would be appreciated as I am currently mid upgrade and normal system service will be expected soon.

Regards,

Jim Maxwell

[Neal Bowman]

Jim,

When the 5302 went through its startup, did it report 2 logical drives or 0 logical drives? When you said that you were warned to correct the problem with arrays being on the wrong channel, what were your options? F1, F2, or F10?

[John Marinov]

Jim,

This sounds a little off. If the array controller knew that the drives were originally connected to ports 3 and 4, that information came from the drives -it isn't stored anywhere else. So you should have been able to ignore error about reshuffling the array. But the array diagnostic utility should have found the arrays, and that's a worry.

The 5302/64 is a two channel controller, but there are two internal connectors as well as two external connectors. Are there any disks on the internal connectors?

Are the two array controllers running the same firmware? Is the 5302 running a current version?

Are you able to reconnect the array to the original 5304/128 and verify the arrays are still there?

Did you move drives only while the system was powered off?


Good luck,

[Stephen Grimmer]

Could be that the firmware level of the two controllers is different and it upgraded the metadata on the drives. Have you looked at that?

Stephen Grimmer

[Jim Maxwell]

John/Stephen/Neal,

Thanks for the replies :)

I don't know about the controller firmware levels but the likelihood is that they were not the same.

I did try reconnecting the array to the correct ports on the original 3504 after the failure to connect to the 3502 but at this point the ACU and the ADU could not detect anything other than unassigned drives on the array :(

At all times the array was disconnected/connected with the server power off.

I am now continuing to attemt to recover the array back at my home sight via ports 3 and 4 on another 3504 controller on another server but as yet I am not having any success as it is also only seeing unnasigned drives in the ACU and ADU.

Regarding the original error messages on the 5302 when first attempting the reconnection I don't think that it mentioned seeing any logical drives it just told me to power down and rectify the cabling problem.

For information we logged a support call with HP and the engineer who responded told us that you cannot do what we were attempting and that you cab ONLY move arrays across IDENTICAL controllers, in this case 3504 to 3504. This really puzzles me as I have (and believe me I Have) checked the 3500 user guide and this is NOT mentioned anywhere - in fact the manual has a section regarding moving arrays and it lists several conditions which must be met before an array can be moved across controllers and nowhere does it mention that the controllers need to be identical :<

Any further assistance will be much appreciated.

Regards,

Jim