Swapping disks between DL380 G5 and DL360 G5

[Robvdb]

Hi all,

I have 3 servers, two DL380 G5 and one DL360 G5 (all have a smart array P400 controller)

one of the DL380 servers has VM running on it,
the other DL380 has Windows 2003 server (2 disks OS Raid 1+0, SAS array A) and
an SQL database (2 disks Raid 1+0, SAS array B)

The DL360 G5 has VM.

I would like to re-organize, so that my two VM machines become identical machines (DL380 G5)

So my question is; is it possible to swap the disks from one server to another, i.e. the
Windows 2003 + SQL db disks from the DL380 to the DL360, (disk from bay1 to bay1, disk from
bay2 to bay 2 etc. and If I would do this, would the machine still run??

Anyone any idea if this is possible or is it just the most weirdt idea ever heared. :-)
any comment is welcome.
Thanks

[juan quesada]

Hi,

If you have 1 logical drive in Raid 1 you can split the array so you will have 2 logical drives in a raid 0 with identical info.
You can place one of the drives in the other server and create a migration (from raid 0 to raid 1) adding a new hdd so both servers will have the same info, before you take any actions I recommend you to update the storage sub system in both machines with the FW CD 7.91

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&swItem=MTX-26a0f9e294764a91b76b282f2a&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Split array page 40
Migrate array page 17

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&swItem=MTX-26a0f9e294764a91b76b282f2a&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Firmware cd 7:91

Something wise will be to have a data back up (better to be in the safe side)

[Blazhev_1]

Hi,

in theory this is possible. Just for safety be sure to have a backup.

1. Update with FW CD everything (System ROM, SA ctrl FW and HDD FW) :

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=1121516&prodNameId=3288134&swEnvOID=1005&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=MTX-26a0f9e294764a91b76b282f2a

There is newer P400 in case you want, but 4.06 must function too :

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=1121516&prodNameId=3288134&swEnvOID=1005&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=MTX-4853ef08cde04220a86b1ad22e


Then shut down both servers and swap the HDDs...

The Raid information is written to the HDDs so the controller must have no problems recognizing them and booting from them, since there is P400 in both servers.

Try & let us know the results :)

Regards,
Pac

[Robvdb]

Hi all,

thanks for the feedback, and here are the results. It took a while but finally it worked.
First we tried to take one disk from the mirror and put it in the second machine, booted with the disk, added a second disk and tried to let it rebuild the mirror, but that didn't work. the UAC always came up with an un-allocated disk, which we couldn't get it that far as adding it to the existing mirror.
So finally, to play it save, we took one part of the mirror of the original server, replaced that one with an empty disk, let the system rebuild the mirror, so we had still one disk as a failover incase something would go wrong, took out again one disk, and put the two disk, so the complete mirror set, and placed it in the other server, and bang, there it was up and running. No data or settings lost... only some hardware detection was showing up, as the hardware between a DL360 G5 and DL380 G5 has some differences.

So end conclusion; YES it works, but you have to move the whole raid set at once...