Imminent Failure warning on DL380 disk. Advice on best course of action

[yamahasuperstar]

Hi,

I'm looking for advice on the best course of action on our DL380 G4 server. (SBS 2003 R2). My work is going to be carried this coming weekend. I apologise in advance for my lack of technical expertise in this area.

I got an imminent failure on one of the SCSI 146gb disks. Light is flashing on the server. I ask what is the best course of action to replace this drive and answer some questions I have.

Current setup:

Smart Array 61 Controller in Embedded Slot:

Parallel SCSI Array A

Logical Drive 1 (69459MB, RAID 1+0)

Parallel SCSI Array B

Logical Drive 2 (286097 MB, RAID 1+0)

The faulty drive is on Array B that has 2 SCSI 146GB disks.

Q: Can I hot swop the disk without data loss?   From reading you need more than 2 disks for 1+0. But can you? The array can't be mirrored if there's 286GB space in total. I'm confused here. (I've used RAID 5 before not 1+0)

If the answer is 'I can swop without loss', great, saves me a long job this weekend.

If the answer is 'no', I will lose data:

Q: How best to proceed? Note: there are two spare slots for disks in the server and I have bought 2 new identical drives. (I'm also running out of space on this drive.)

Q: Can I expand the array with a disk, wait for it to complete and come online, then remove the faulty disk?

Q: Can I expand the array with 2 new disks, remove the faulty disk. Left with 3 working disks. Will this increase space by having a third?

Q: Is it better to have assign a spare for future?

I know there are many questions. Your thoughts please. And yes, backup and backup and check backups. Fingers crossed I'm panicking about having to create the drive again.

Thank you in advance.

Tony

[Johan Guldmyr]

Maybe you got 4 disks in Array B?

Anyway, is that a Smart Array 6i controller? (standard on DL380 G4).

On the 6i it's hot-swap, the drive should start rebuild after you replace the disk.

If you're going to expand/extend the array/logical drive/partition then I recommend that you do this when your array is in a stable state. For RAID1+0 a 3rd drive doesn't make much sense. If you got two in addition to the two already in the array you could increase the RAID1+0. So for you I believe the only option you have with the one drive is to add it as a spare.

[yamahasuperstar]

typo yes it is a 6i controller.

No, there's only 2 disks in the array.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh - I think I've worked out the problem. I've just checked the array conif utility again and the physical view of the array clearly says the disks are 300GB. But when I personally look at the server, the trays say 146GB. So some intelligent person who built the server (before I started with the company) didn't relabel the disk trays!

The air is clear again! Now, I'm off to find whoever built the server and give them a boot :) and buy a new 300gb disk :(

Thanks for your help

Tony.

[Johan Guldmyr]

And it makes sense again!