How clone/backup system disk on Proliant 1600

[Dorothea Muecke-Herzber]

Hello,

I have inherited from my predecessor an Exchange Server on a Proliant 1600 with a SMART-2DH controller. The Exchange data is on a RAID5 but the Exchange log disk and the system disk are just one RAID0 disk each.

For peace of mind I would like to clone/backup the system disk, before I carry out any further system changes. It seems I can't just take out the 2nd RAID0 disk, put in a spare disk instead and migrate the RAID0 to 1 ("migration not upported by this controller")

I have another Proliant Server who has a RAID1 set up. Could I just put my 1st RAID0 and the spare disk in that one and start the rebuild process or some of the mirroring information kept on the RAID controller?

Thanks

Doro

[Thilo Knoch]

Just the way I would do it:
I would create an image of the system partition of the Exchange server, using a dos boot diskette with network support (okay I have a bootable cdrom) and Driveimage (Version 4 is okay for NT4, for W2K V5 is required). The destination of the image file would be a network share.
Then you can restore the image to the other machine (but they must not see each other, they have the same netbios name and SID).
If this and further tests are successful, I would create an image again, destroy (RAID-0) and re-create the arrays (RAID-1) and logical disks and restore the image.
For the peace of mind I would never take a RAID-0 disk from a productive machine to another. If something happens to this disk (may be a "normal" disk failure) you have complete loss of data.

[Dorothea Muecke-Herzber]

I have thought of using a imaging software, but what about the RAID controller?
Does Driveimage support the SMART-2DH?

[Thilo Knoch]

I don't know whether array controllers are supported officially, but for me it worked with the SmartArray 2/E, 2/P, 2DH, 3200, integrated, 530x, 5i and even with the Mylex DAC960 PG/PJ and an ICP-Vortex GDT 6111.
I think the imaging software uses the BIOS interface of the controller.
As far as I have seen, under DOS you can only see the logical drives. All other details are hidden (the used physical drives and the RAID level).
But this should be enough for imaging.
At least for me it was. I have done some "destructive" disk upgrades using imaging software (means replacing the 9 GB system disks by 18 GB ones, or in an other case where a machine had only one RAID5 replacing all four 18 GB disks with 36 GB disks.) And even cloning from a DL 580 with integrated array controller to a ML 530 with a SA 5302 was successful (we had to install the driver for the 5302 before imaging because the SA 5. controllers need an other driver than the older SA 2/E up to SA 3200).
And this is your option: you have got a second machine, you can try to clone your Exchange server to the second machine before.
I am using only the DOS Recovery Diskettes of DriveImage 4.0 or 5.01 (the normal, non-Pro version), network support added. It is slower than Ghost, but you don't need to install anything to the server and you can write to a normal windows share.

[Dorothea Muecke-Herzber]

Hi,

Sorry was away. Thank you for this. If it worked for you so many times, I will give it a shot. All I have to do now is to find an old driveimage - the new version needs SP6a, which isn't installed yet and won't until I have a clone :-{
What I had attempted previously was to create a disk image using a SuSE Linux live evaluation CD and "dd" to copy the disk. This worked insofar, that I could clone the system disk and boot from an NT boot floppy, but I couldn't boot from the disk itself - always got "Missing operating system" :-(