Rebuild Array With Spare

[James Lagnese]

We have a DL320s, dual 2.4 dual core xeon, 8 gigs of ram, with a smart array P400 and the OS is RHEL 5.5. We had 6 300gb 15K SAS drives in the cage. We also had an extra 300 gb drive, but not configured as anything. Drive 6 died today and I downloaded the ACU software and configured drive 7 (300gb SAS) as a spare. Will this rebuild the array automatically, or is there something else I should do? I've never worked with this array before and I definitely don't want to screw it up. It's the email server. Thanks in advance.
Jim

[gregersenj · Accepted solution]

Yes. It will rebuild automatically.

But what you have done is a detour.

If you have a hotspare configured, the SA will rebuild on it automatically, upon disk failure.

If you do not got a hotspare. The SA will wait untill you replace the disk, then it will rebuild when you insert a new disk, in the position of the failed disk.
Ei. Disk in bay 4 has failed.
Pull out bad disk.
Waite 30 seconds.
Insert new disk in bay 4.
Rebuild will start automatically.

When you got a hot spare, it will rebuild to the hotspare, as mentioned.
But you are still expected to replace the bad disk.
When you replace the bad disk, the SA will copy data to the new disk. And the hotspare will become hotspare again.

So you still need to replace disk 6, wich has failed.
If you don't. The Array will be in status: Degraded. And evertime you reboot, it will tell you that it's waiting for a new disk in bay 6.

In your case, you should have removed bad disk, disk 6. And moved disk 7 to bay 6, and put a blanking panel in bay 7.

It's OK you have not messed up anything.
Simply replace disk 6 when you recive a spare.

BR
/jag

[James Lagnese]

Thank you very much.

[Michael A. McKenney]

Assign the drive as a spare for that array.

[gregersenj]

You're welcome.

BR
/jag