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Is Hotspare Policy Required?
I am running Raid 10 with 4 physical disks on PERC 6 mini. I currently have 2 physical drives configured as hot spares. All 6 drives are identical.
I have NOT configured the "Global Hot Spare Policy" or "Dedicated Hot Spare Policy".
Question: Will the currently configured Global Hot Spares be used in the case of a drive failure in the Raid 10 array?
Or, does a policy need to be defined before the hot spares will be used?
Thanks in advance.
Dell-DylanJ
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March 26th, 2020 09:00
Hi Mondo,
What do you want the disks to do? If you want the two of them to continue acting as hotspares for any array, specific config changes to your policy wouldn't be required. If you only want them to replace failed disks in a specific RAID volume, you would need to flag them as dedicated hotspares. You only need to adjust the policy if you want finer control than that.
If it helps for perspective, I've had several thousand server cases over the years, but none of them were with people that needed, or even wanted, to tweak the policy. That's not to say it's wrong or that it isn't for you, just that it may not be something you need.
DiegoLopez
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March 26th, 2020 02:00
Hello @MondoBass
I am not sure what you exactly mean with a Global/Dedicated Hot Spare "Policy". Could you explain this a little further? Is the word "Policy" what I do not understand. In what enviorement would you want to activate this "Policy"? Normally, only Controller Cache are considered as "Policies".
But on a more general level (and I hope this answers your question too), you can configure a Global or Dedicated Hot Spare either on the iDRAC, the PERC BIOS or OpenManage Server Administrator. This configuration will be enough for making this Hot Spare work, you don't need to set any extra "policy".
If you configure a Dedicated Hot Spare, it will mean that you will have a disk available to jump in in case one disk of the selected array fails. In other words, this Dedicated Hot Spare disk will only be available for one array.
On the other hand, the Global Hot Spare will jump in for any arrays configured on the system.
Check this article for extra information:
Dell PowerEdge: How to Assign a Hard Drive in Global Hot Spare?
Best regards.
MondoBass
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March 26th, 2020 08:00
From the host machine launch Dell EMC OpenManage Server Administrator
Click on "Storage"
In the "Storage Dashboard" you will see "Options" at the top of the window.
The first option is "Set Hot Spare Protection Policy"
The new window is Titled, "Set Hot Spare Protection Policy".
Here is what the instructions state...
"Configure a hot spare protection policy to specify the number of physical disks to be configured as hot spares for all virtual disks created on this system. Specify the severity level you want to apply if the policy is violated. Virtual disk status will be affected by the severity level you specify. Storage Management will generate events when it detects a policy violation."
Then, there are check boxes for "Raid 1, Raid 5, Raid 10, etc." For each of these selections you can select the "Minimum Number of Disks" and the "Severity Level" (Informational, Warning, Critical).
There are policies for "Dedicated" and "Global" Hot Spares.
MondoBass
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March 26th, 2020 08:00
Here is the screenshot.
MondoBass
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March 26th, 2020 11:00
Thank you for the quick response.
I just want the global spares to be available (normally) in the event of a physical drive failure on my Raid 10 array. This is really important and the instructions (in my opinion) did not make it clear that this would be the case if the policy were configured or not.
Like your other clients, I do not want to set up a policy. I just want to make sure the array is protected.
Thanks again.
DiegoLopez
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2.7K Posts
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March 27th, 2020 08:00
Okay! Then I can confirm you that if you apply the following procedure you will have the Hot Spare enabled and working: Dell PowerEdge: How to Assign a Hard Drive in Global Hot Spare?
Regards.