cloning disks via raid 0+1

[Bengt I Nilsson]

Hi,

I'm about to configure 3 identical (except for IP-address) DL380 G5 servers, each having 2 logical raid 0+1 disks.

Is it possible to just configure one server and then multiply that servers disks just by moving disks between servers? If so, how do I do that?

Regards Bengt

[Iron_Ferrier · Accepted solution]

Hi,
yes you can do that.
Requirements should be an identical hardware.
Take one of the raid 0+1 OS harddisk und put them to the same place in the server, which you want to clone.
Boot up the server with only one disk (the array controller shows a failure, Press F2 to continue) The OS should now boot up, when the OS is. If it works, you could build in the second disk.

Please regard the following:
1) make sure, that there is no connect to LAN
2) When the OS work, change the SID (W2K,W2K3)
3) rename the server, put it in a workgroup
4) reboot
5) integrate the server into the domain
6) Put in the second hard disk

[Bengt I Nilsson]

Thanks very much Eisenschmid!

I'm running Fedora so I guess your points 2,3 and 5 will be a little bit different for me.

Just to clarify that I got you right:

(Original system, O, with logical disk A and B. Physical A1, A2, B1, B3. Second, unconfigured, system: S)

I pull out for example A2 and B2 from O and put them in slots A2 and B2 on system S. No other disks in S.

Boot S. Push F2 to continue after failure msg.

Reconfigure S with new name and ip-address.

Put in (new) disks in S-A1 and S-B1.

Put in (new) disks in O-A2 and O-B2.

Another question: What are the requirements of a disk, apart from same type and size, to use as a replacemet of a failing disk in the above configuration? Reformatted?

Regards Bengt

[Iron_Ferrier]

Right,
you can also replace the disks in Server O first, so you don't need the two disks for the Server O any more.
If you have a DL380 G5 with a P400 Raidcontroller you don't have to preformat the disks, you can unpack the new disk and put it in the slot of O and S hotplug. It will be rebuilded and formatted by the raid-controller.
The new disk must have the same size as the origin disks or could be bigger.