Disk Mirroring for HP NetServer E60

[lee_7]

Anybody know how to perform the disk mirroring at above server ? What additional parts is required ? How to configure it ? Is this function have to configure at Hardware side or Software side ? I am very new in the IT industry, please assist me.

P.S. This thread ahs been moevd from Disk to Servers > Netservers. - Hp Forum moderator

[Eric de Lange_2 · Accepted solution]

Hello Lee,

You will need a HP NetRaid 1Si card and one additional disk. Build the card in the server, hook up both disks to the SCSI connector in the card, configure the disks as mirror set and off you go. The documentation with the card will tell you how to configure it. Should you wish to expand to RAID5 in future the card will accomodate this although I am unsure if the e60 will hold that many disks.

Hope this helps,

Cal.

[lee_7]

Thanks a lot Caliban.

[lee_7]

Hello Cal,
Sorry Cal, can I ask you 1 more questions ?
Is 'Internal duplexing' for hard disk is mean Disk Mirroring ? If so, can I get additional SCSI hard disk and 1 E60 Internal SCSI Cable to perform the disk mirroring ? Because I read this from the user guide, and the internal cable have to connect to the Channel B of SCSI controller which is enbedded on the board. But I am not understand how does this work, isn't automatically the PC will perform the disk mirroring for me ? Please help.

[Eric de Lange_2]

Hi Lee,

Disk mirroring can be done in 2 ways. With soft mirroring, the operating system (like NT) takes care of writing a copy of all data on the second disk which is connected to the same SCSI controller. When one disk dies, you configure the system to boot from the mirror disk and your on the road again.

Having the operating system taking care of the mirroring (soft mirroring) has some disadvantages. To overcome some of these you may wish to use a Netraid card which takes care of the mirroring for you instead of the Operating system. This would be called a hardware mirror system. Recovery is often easier but these Raid cards are pretty pricy sometimes.

If the SCSI controller of a mirrored pair breaks your server will be 'down' so sometimes it might be good to do duplexing. Duplexing is where 2 disks are acting as a mirror but both disks will have their own SCSI controller. If one controller or disk goes down, you can still work with the other disk. As you can see, more redundancy comes at a price :-)

The E60 has 2 onboard SCSI channels that will allow you to do duplexing BUT the actual mirroring operation will have to be done by the Operating system since the onboard SCSI controllers do not know how to do that. Other models of Netservers (LT and LH) have on board Raid controllers that do but are more expensive as well.

So, you can use 2 disks in your E60, each connected to their own controller but it might not give you the redundancy you need. If the motherboard dies, your server will still be 'down' anyway.

I hope this explains it for you. Count the contents of your wallet and see what solution would fit your situation :-)

Best regards,

Cal.