NetServer LC 3 RAID problems

[Steven Sharp]

I have a NetServer LC 3 with a NetRaid controller (D4943-60002). The original controller appeared to fail as it would always lock up on "Firmware Initializing" after a reboot. I purchased an identical NetRaid controller and installed it. Now the NetRAID Express controller utility sees the logical drive and all the physical drives but shows one of the drives to be bad. It was originally configured as a RAID 1. When I run the HP NetServer Diagnostic assistant all the tests pass and shows that there are no problems with any of the drives.

No matter what I do with the NetRaid Express utilities, ie, rebuild drive or auto rebuild, it says this drive is bad and the server will not find the logical drive and I get the "operating system is not found" error.

This problem server was handed down to me after the first guy was fired so I have very little info on anything. All I know is there has been no backup on this box either. It was running Novell Netware v 4 or 4.5....I am not sure.

This just seems like a configuration problem but I don't know where else to look. The server had been up for more than a year without a problem. When I rebooted it to install backup software (how ironic!) it never came back up. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Steve

P.S. Attached is a copy of the diag.log from the assistant.

[Mark Young_2]

Hi,

It sounds like maybe you originally had a failed drive. Sometimes if you have a failed drive, it can hang the BUS, which may be why your server would freeze at the "Firmware Initializing" screen. It's possible that the original card was okay.

I'm not sure why Diagtools is listing the drives as ok, but usually I would trust the NetRAID Express tools. If it is reporting a drive as failed, then the drive probably has failed. I would try to remove the drive which is showing as failed, and see if the server will then boot into the OS. You did say it was setup in a RAID 1 right?

If the drive is failed to the point of hanging the BUS, it certainly will not rebuild. I would also recommend calling HP technical support. Even if you are not under warranty they can help walk you through some troubleshooting steps to get to the bottom of your issue. This is a free service.

Mark

[kris rombauts]

Hi Steve,

Mark is correct and the hang at bootup is most likely due to a bad disk that causes the Netraid to hang at that stage.
Was their no disk led flashing at that time ? this would be the one that does not get into a READY state.

Normally pulling out that bad disk would have fixed the hang and even with a degraded array (only one disk left in the raid1 array) you would still be able to boot succesfully and just insert a good disk later on to rebuild onto.

Now that you already have another Netraid that read the raid config from the disks, i would do the following :

- remove the disk that is marked as failed
- clear the config of the Netraid
- reconfigure the raid as being a raid0
(only the good disk of the original raid1
stays in the server at this time)
- DO NOT INITIALIZE THE NEW ARRAY, answer no
and reboot.

- If nothing else was wrong, this will let
you boot from the good disk in to Netware.

- you can migrate this raid0 back to raid1
later when you have a good disk.

- if the disk that is marked as 'failed'
now is really bad is another question and
you could try ro re-use it and if it
fails again then really replace it, it
can be that it is marked as failed
because it did not replied in a timely
fashion at boot up i.e.
Once a disk has been marked as FAILED by
the Netraid controller for some reason it
needs to be manually set to "ready", the
Netraid controller will never set it to
good again by itself even if the disk
reacts normal again unlike with normal
non RAID scsi controllers that would just
start re-using a disk that was a bit
flaky before i.e. ue being powered off
and not getting spin up and ready in due
time before the controller times out on
it.



HTH

Kris