Replace bad hard drive in an HP ML350 G6

[miguelmachado]

Hello,

I have an HP ML350 G6 server with 2 diks in raid 1 and one of them is bad.
I wanted to know if i need to shutdown the server in order to replace the bad hdd.

I already have a new hdd with the same part number as the faulty one (626162-001)

Thank you

[parnassus]

That spare part SKU refers to an Hot Plug disk so...you sould be able to exchange bad disk with the spare you already have if the RAID controller supports Hot Plug operation, a feature your Server should yet use since both your actual disks are already Hot Plug (isn't it?).

[miguelmachado]

Yes they are, but my question is:

- Do i have to shutdown the server in order to remove the faulty disk and insert the new one?
Or i just simply remove the bad hard drive while the server is running and add the new?

I'm afraid i can damage the server if i just remove the bad HDD while its running.

Thank you.

[parnassus]

Generally "Hot Plug" means exactly what you need: removing/inserting disks while Server is running...no Server shutdown should be required...anyway you must first ensure that:
(a) your Array parity (RAID 1 in your case) lets your Server to stay up and running with just one good disk (in RAID 1 that's permitted since the 2 mirrored disks Array survives to one disk fault) permitting you to recover the second disk with the manual replacement procedure...that is yet happening since your Server is still running on a degraded RAID 1...so hurry up before the only one disk you it has goes faulty too, (b) you know the status of your Array and HP RAID Controller (via HP Smart Storage Administrator, as example) so you can check the logical recovering operations before/during/after disk replacement (that because you must understand if/when the parity is rebuild automatically once you insert the new disk)...that's to say that, physically speaking, hot plug enabled disk replacement is basically a plug and play manual operation (your Server has not a global hot spare disk to save you from this task)...but...you need a bare minimum of logical knowledge to understand what is going on behind the scene (AKA what your Server does when you will replace the faulty disk).

What RAID controller do you have? what is its actual status (SSA)? How the RAID controller was configured (to understand if parity rebuilding - resilvering - will start immediately)?