Mirroring Drives

[Drew Timmerman]

I have two drives mirrored in a DL360. I want to take one of the drives out and use it as the primary drive in a mirrored configuration in a new DL360.

In other words, I just want to clone one server to another one using the RAID controller.

I've done this with DL145's and it's a piece of cake. You just take a drive from the source server, put it in the target server, choose the drive as the primary of the RAID config and that you want to migrate the data and life is good.

The 360 wipes out my data every time I try to do the same thing - there's no option that I can find for migrating the data.

[Víctor Cespón · Accepted solution]

- Generation of the DL360?
- Controller model on both DL360s?
- Do you insert only the "master" disk and power on?

If you're putting the "master" (from the other DL360) disk and a blank one, how does the controller know which one to copy on the other? Boot with "master" disk and add a new disk later, with the server powered on.

[Patrick Terlisten]

Hello,

I can confirm the statement of vcespon. Boot from the disk and hot add the new drive, on which you want to mirror.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Patrick

[Drew Timmerman]

Still no luck. As soon as I try to boot from a single disk, it doesn't find the drive. I think that because the drive and controller have never been married, it wants to create a new logical drive and wipe out my disk.

It is a DL360G5 with the P400i controller. All hardware is identical.

This is so easy to do with a 145 :(

Have you actually done this with a 360?

[Víctor Cespón]

No, SmartArray controllers support RAID migration from one controller to another, even if they are not the same exact model. If you put the disk on another server, it should detect that there's already a RIS on the disk, and load the information from there. That's why we can replace SmartArrays / motherboards and the customer's data is still there.
Can you boot with SmartStart CD and check what ACU sees with that disk inserted?

[Drew Timmerman]

Okay, I did get it to work as you described. My problem was that I had broken the RAID1 config on the target server, and that's why it stopped working. When I put two blank drives in the target, reconfigured RAID1, then took both drives out and put one of the drives from the source server into the target, I could boot from it and then add the 2nd drive while the OS was up.

Thanks for your help!