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cspieg

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32227

July 12th, 2005 23:00

Hot Swap Perc 4/Di

Hello,
 
I have a PowerEdge 2600 with the onboard Perc 4/Di RAID controller configured as RAID 1 running Windows Server 2003.  I would like to be able to occasionally pull one drive to keep as a backup and put in a new drive without having to reboot the machine and rebuild the mirror.  Would I need to upgrade my RAID card in order to be able to do this?  What about the drive bays, would they need to be replaced?  Can a service person from Dell set this up for me?
 
Thanks,
 
Chuck S.

GeforceXP

12 Posts

July 13th, 2005 13:00

This is a really interesting question as I also have a PowerEdge 2600 Server with the onboard Perc 4/Di RAID controller set up as Raid 1, but running Windows 2000 Server. Still, the same rule applies when backing up.
 
What I do know is that, when I pull one of the hard drives, the system automatically knows and obviously carries on as normal. When I plug the hard drive back in.. Say after 30 seconds, the whole image is re-wrote onto the 2nd hard drive in the array and can take well over 24 hours in some cases.
 
The Server knows the ID of the hard drive in the array, and so really shouldn't rebuild the array to any other hard drive unless you re-create the array with one of the original hard drives and a new one... So I guess I really don't know.
 
Would be the perfect solution for backing up though. Do it say once a week.

pcmeiners

4 Operator

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1.8K Posts

July 16th, 2005 20:00

Is a good question. If you setup a global hot spare, If a drive is pulled the hotspare kicks automatically, your "pulled" drive is a copy. I have never tried to use a pulled drive  in this situation  to resurect a raid, perhaps Dell or Lsilogic could shed some light on this. If this possible, a machine shut done would not be necessary .

pcmeiners

4 Operator

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1.8K Posts

July 18th, 2005 15:00

Just checked with LSIlogic, OEM of the Perc4E.
 
As I surmised, doable with a cravat. So you have disk 1, 2 and a hotspare. The second disk is "pulled" as a backup or is pulled before an MS update, just in case the update messes up the server. The hot spare kicks in, and rebuilds, the rebuild is completed.
 
Something goes wrong with the raid 1 or the MS updates messes up the server build....
Go into the array manager and fail the second disk. From a server restart, you would have to go into the setup and fail the first disk, than  removed both disks. Place the "pulled" disk in the slot occupied by disk 1, restart the server as a test the "Pulled" disk will boot the server. Place disk 2, back into the disk 2 slot, make sure the rebuild starts.  The Lsi tech did not sound total sure, sounds good to me, this procedure may need modification, so I would test this on a lab machine.

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