DL380 G3 SCSI Hard Drive LEDS

[Kim B]

I just expanded the A array from 1 72.8GB hard drive to 2 72.8GB hard drives and migrated it from RAID 0 to RAID 0+1. Now that the migration is complete, the original drive has the following LEDs: activity flashing, online on, and fault flashing. What does that mean?

The only thing I can find for the G3 is flashing-flashing-flashing, which means the drive is part of an array being selected by the ACU. When I enter the ACU and select the array or logical drive both drive 0 and drive 1 have all indicators flashing. When I exit the ACU, drive 0 returns to flashing-on-flashing.

By the way, the drive has a predictive failure alert, which is why I wanted to migrate to RAID 0+1. I also read that for the G4, flashing-on-flashing means "a predictive failure alert has been received for this drive. Replace the drive as soon as possible." Could that be what it means on the G3? Can I safely remove the drive in this state?

Thanks in advance.

Kim

[Brian_Murdoch · Accepted solution]

Hi Kim,

Yes the amber flashing light indicates a drive which has been recorded as requiring attention. It has exceeded error thresholds but has not "failed" yet so it is still an active member of whatever raid set it belongs to.

This flashing amber warning was introduced quite some time ago by controller and drive firmware to bring the fault to your attention when physically near the system and is backed up by loging a predictive failure against the drive on the system management side.
If you run the Array Diagnostic Utility (ADU) it may reveal what the actual problem is with this drive but it will need to be replaced at some point in the near future before it does reach a point where it will be considered as "failed" and dropped from the raidset.

This applies to all modern Smart Array controllers and isn't really a server feature, rather a controller feature.

I hope this helps.

Brian

[Kim B]

Thanks, Brian.

[Kim B]

Brian answered my questions.