Swapping drives betweem two Proliant 1600

[Trung Nguyen_2]

My Proliant 1600 had a hardware failure and I'm looking to replace it with another Proliant 1600R. The failed one had a smart array 221 with three 8GB hard drives and Novell 5.1. The replaced one will have a smart array 431 with six 18GB drives. Beside the array configuration and rack style, the two Proliants are similar w PIII 500MHz.

My question is can I just take the three old 8GB hard drives from the failed machine and swap it with the three 18GB HD from the replaced one and expect Novell netware 5.1 to boot up properly without any complications?

Thank you for your help.

Trung

[JohnWRuffo · Accepted solution]

Are the drives built as a RAID 5? Yes... then;
You should be able to move all of the drives (in logical order) to the new server and have the array migrate to the new system.
Once the system is up and running, you should be able to swap out the drives one at a time and have the RAID "rebuild" on the new 18GB drive. Be sure to allow the drive to complete the process of restriping before swaping another disk. If you have the storage agent runing, you will get a console message stating the logical drive status.
Then you can perform your array modifications once the array if fully rebuilt and all the drives are swaped.

You can then use the old 9GB drives for a "new array"...

[JohnWRuffo]

Here is a document for the migration and rebuild process:
ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/servers/proliantstorage/drives-enclosures/hp%20hard%20drive%20replacement.pdf

Here is the migration document:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?locale=en_US&taskId=115&prodSeriesId=374791&prodTypeId=329290&objectID=c00180566

Though, the document states that migrating to the 431 will have migration and expansion disabled. This states that you cannot "expand" the existing array to use the 18GB drives. You will have to create a new logical drive on the extra space.

[Trung Nguyen_2]

Yes, the old 9GB drives are built as Raid 5. Thank you so much for your quick answer.

Further you also show me how to migrate all my files to the 18GB drive. Thanks again. Now will the "RAID" rebuild on a non-clean 18GB drive, i.e. containing data, or do I need to reformat the 18GB before doing so?

I truly appreciate your help John. Thank you.

Trung

[JohnWRuffo]

If you use the 18GB drives to replace the 9GB drives (performing a RAID rebuild) then all of the data that once existed on the 18GB drives will be "overwritten" when the Array controller initializes the drive. Once you complete the rebuild on all three 18GB drives will then have the 18GB drives with one logical 18Gb logical drive and another 18GB of unused space.

If you merely add the 18GB drives to the other three empty drive bays then you will "migrate" the array to the new system. Your array controller will "detect the array" and "initiallize" it.
Then you will have 2 logical drives initallized on the controller.

Does that help in explaining your options?

[Brian Murdoch]

Trung,

There may be a couple of other things to watch out for when booting from the old drives in the new server.

I believe that both the 221 and the 431 will use the CPQARRAY.HAM driver but the position of the cards will dictate the slot= entry within STARTUP.NCF and the system may prompt you for a slot number on boot. The easiest way to overcome this is to make sure that the 431 is positioned in the same PCI slot as the 221 was on the old server. This is true for any additional network or SCSI cards etc. Try and mimic the old server on the new one if possible.

If you do have to change hardware slot positions remember to run the System Configuration Utility immediately after. You may have to run this from the Smartstart CD (5.50 or lower)until you get a working system. While you are in the SCU, check that the Operating System is set to Netware 5.1, if this new system had been running anything else.

This might save you any pain later and should help to achieve a smooth swap-over.

I hope this helps.

Brian

[Trung Nguyen_2]

John:
Thank you for the follow-up answers which clear up all my concerns. In fact, my old server had three 18GB HD and the replaced one has six 9GB HD. So I just had to remove all the 9GB and insert the three 18GB in. Now, last night, during the swapping process, I did not fully inserted in the drive #2 and yet, fortunately, Netware boot up properly on the replaced server and our network is back up and running. Thank you "Magic Raid 5 Array". When I saw my mistake this morning, I reinserted the drive #2 properly and I trust that Raid 5 Array will take care of rebuilding that drive.

Brian:

Thank you ver much for your very pertinent suggestions. Unfortunately, I did not see your post on time so I did not check to make sure that all the PCI sards were in the exact same slot as in the old server. That explains why the server asked me to reconfigure the system and I had to went through a hardware setting process. But on the first start up, Novell did not load properly and the system halted due to some error or missing NLM.

Well, this morning I went into the NWSERVER directory and run SERVER.EXE. Wow, Novell boot up properly and the server is up and running. I have no idea why it failes last night and run this morning but I'm thrilles that it's up and working.

Thank you ver much John and Brian for your help.

Trung