Steps for replacing drives in a G30 and E55

[Kathleen]

Is there a place with basic instructions on how to replace drives in a G30 and E55. We are upgrading some drives in our system and I have never replaced hardware before (myself). I welcome this as a good learning experience but am wondering if there are good instructions somewhere for doing this. I know one of the drives we would like to upgrade to a bigger drive is the boot drive......so I know that needs to be handled special. Thanks so much!
I do have the new drives I need already....I am just looking for a good plan to follow.

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Kathleen,

Are you looking for suggestion from a hardware or a OS point of view.

Regards

[Kathleen]

The new hardware, I have. But what is required to get the new drives in....so I am guessing that would be hardware to some extent. And then steps to get the drives configured for use. So both, really.

[Helen French]

Some points to follow:

1) Always wear your anti-static tools (wrist band), before you touch the hardwares.

2) Before replacing the disks, check the SCSI ids of the existing disks and devices and plan to configure your new disk, so that it will not clash on the SCSI IDs.

For G30:

1) Remove the front pannel
2) The disks will be in two side bay.
3) Unscrew the bay you want to fix the new drive and remove it by pulling it out (remove the SCSI and power cables from the existing disks).
4) Find out the free SCSI cable connector and power cable connector.
5) Fix the new disk in the bay using screws
6) Fix the disks back to the cables
7) Fix the bay and the front pannel cover back
8) Start the system and interrupt the boot process and check whether all disks are detected ("sea")

For E55:

1) Remove the front pannel
2) Unscrew the bay and pull it out (remove the SCSI and power cables from the existing devices).
4) Find out the free SCSI cable connector and power cable connector.
5) Fix the new disk in the bay using screws
6) Fix the disks back to the cables
7) Fix the bay and the front pannel cover back
8) Start the system and interrupt the boot process and check whether all disks are detected ("sea")

[Helen French · Accepted solution]

OK ..for the OS part:

For both systems:

1) Once the disks are identified, start the system in normal mode.
2) You can either configure it through SAM or command line. For SAM, disk and file systems -> disk devices -> Find the unused one -> Actions and configure new VG, LVs and file systems.
3) For command line:

# ioscan -fnC disk (find out the new drive device file)
# pvcreate /dev/rdsk/cxtydz
# mkdir /dev/vg02 (for eg: vg02)
# mknod /dev/vg02/group c 64 0x020000
# vgcreate /dev/vg02 /dev/dsk/cxtydz
# vgdisplay, pvdisplay (for checking)
# lvcreate -L 2048 /dev/vg02 (create 2GB LV)
# newfs -F vxfs /dev/vg02/rlvol1 (FS create)
# edit /etc/fstab and add entries for new FS
# mkdir /mount_point
# mount -a

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Kathleen,

I think shiju has already covered all the bases, though i doubt i could have given you the hardware replacement in such details. you see i'm not using G30 or E55 at present, and have forgotten how they look like. Have a rough idea but not something i would bet on.

good Luck.

Regards