Problem with VA7100 array

[james gould]

Have a spare drive that has gone bad on a
VA7100. Have not replaced the drive yet because the system is running very slow and there seems to be a problem with memory so I don't want to replace until this is taken care of first.
HP checked that the array itself is good, but the spare needs to be replaced. My question is can I reboot the server first to hopefully free up memory and then replace the drive? I am concerned that if I try to replace the drive now that the system will completly get bogged down and no processing can take place.

[Iain Ashley]

Replace the disk now. The array is independant of the system and is designed so that replacing a disk will not impact performance greatly. If you have the replacement already, just remove the old one, wait a moment, then insert the new one, a rebuild should start automatically.

Your performance issues may be caused by the failed disk producing backend fibre channel issues, so replacing the disk might actually help. Also make sure you are running the latest firmware for the VA (HP19) and disks (various) with command view 1.07. If you are planning an outage to fix your memory issues then may be a good time.

regards
Iain Ashley

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi James,

do you just want to replace a spare disk? This shouldn't put any load at all on the host. I would do it right away. Why do you want to replace spare? Is it defect? Thatt might irritate the scsi bus.

Michael