ML350p Gen8 w/ P420i RAID 5 - Drive Swap Question

[bryman85]

I have an ML350p Gen8 with a P420i controller. There are 6 drives in the bay; 5 are in a RAID 5 array and one is a cold spare. We had a drive in bay 1 go into predictive failure. I set the controller to swap in the spare drive when predictive failure is detected. The spare has been re-built and is running in the array now but I have one question that I havent found an answer on in the manuals. We ordered a replacement for the server but I am not sure how to go about replacing the dead drive. Do I just pull it and insert the new drive after 30 seconds or so or do I need to make the active spare a part of the main array and assign the new one as a new spare? I have not seen a clear answer for this situation anywhere and I was hoping someone here could help.

Thanks!

[parnassus · Accepted solution]

Hi, incidentally I think an explanation could be found on a recent Post I made a week ago looking for a clarification about Spare Management Modes feature of HPE Smart Array Controllers (see here): basically if the Spare Management Mode was/is set to Auto-Replace Drives (check through SSA) then the replacement disk you will kick in into bay 1 (the bay that hosted the failed removed disk of you Array) is going to became automatically the new Spare disk and, clearly, no rebuild operation will then happen since your Array is already not degraded anymore (the original Spare disk, after the initial rebuild operation against it succeeded, became a Data disk of the Array changing its role).

[bryman85]

I installed the new drive today and it actually rebuild it, made it part of the array and reassigned the active spare as a cold spare again. Thanks for your help on this. I wish HP was more clear on how that process works as it is a basic process a lot of people who use this configuration will eventually need to perform.

[parnassus]

Yes, I agree with you.
Descriptions of Spare Management modes on reported HPE SSA User Guide is far from being totally clear (if it was only me...someone can say I'm not good enough to understand few english sentences...but it wasn't only me...I've no doubt that a better rephrasing would help users to decide and understand what is the best Spare Management approach for their storage scenario).