ML350G3 Migrating RAID between 2 servers using different controllers

[Simon Peak]

Hi everyone

We have 2 ML350 Generation 3 servers in our server room. One of these servers functions as a production SQL 2000 server (referred to hereafter as S1) and the other server (S2) is currently unused.

S1 is suffering from period NMI random reboots. The event log indicates that a memory module is faulty, but none of the diagnostic tools I tried could find any errors. Also, the slot no. of the supposedly faulty module reported in the event log after a reboot keeps changing. I suspect something else is faulty but it's proving very difficult to pinpoint.

I need to figure out the best way to ensure our DB server is stable and would really appreciate some assistance and suggestions.

Since we have a spare almost identical server available, I feel it's worth looking at how to migrate S1 to S2.

Firstly, the servers are identical apart from:

a) S2 uses 10K SCSI hard drives.
b) S2 has two Smart Array 532 controllers, where as S1 has a SA 641 and SA 642 controller.

So far I've come up with the following options.

1) Remove drives from S2. Transplant all drives from S1 to S2 and boot the server.

2) Remove drives from S2. Transplant all drives AND RAID controllers from S1 to S2 and boot server.

3) Rebuilding S2 from scratch to be identical to S1 and switching them. No hardware switching needed for this option.

My feeling is that it would to go for option 2, because the drives and controllers in S1 are better than in S2. However I hesitate because this is a production server and I don't want to mess it up. My questions are:

- Is moving disks from one server to another supported/safe? What about when the two servers use different RAID controllers and the shift is from a SA 641 to an SA 532. Will the 532 detect the arrays properly?
- How about moving RAID controllers AND drives?

Has anyone had experience with this situation? I'd love to hear any suggestions!

Thanks

Simon

[Simon Peak]

Oops, I forgot to add that S1 uses 15K drives.

S1: 15K drives
S2: 10K drives

[Marek Nelec · Accepted solution]

Hi Simon
I would suggest option 2, just make sure that BIOS settings in S2 will be the same as settings in S1, and RAID controllers will occupy the same slots. Moving drives WITH RAID controllers is IMHO necessary, because Windows will most probably not boot from different generation of RAID controller.
Moving controllers and drives is OK, I've done it more than a couple of times when customer's servers died. Done it usually on Netware servers, but also some W2K.