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Installed locations of HDD in new T620 Server
Greetings,
We recently purchased a new T620 server and selected a pre configured option to have two RAID arrays using six 900GB disks. The system that arrived has all six disks installed on the top level of the 16-drive 2.5" cage at the bottom of the tower. The arrays were supposed to be configured as a two drive RAID-1 array for the OS install and a four drive RAID-5 array that I planned to use for all of our data.
I have not yet booted the system for the first time but I am assuming that the RAID arrays were set up correctly by Dell. My question is:
Is it possible to physically MOVE the four disks that are a part of the RAID-5 array from the top level of the 16-drive cage to the lower level prior to booting the system without breaking the array or will I need to reconfigure the array if I am changing the drives physical locations on the backplane?
Thanks in advance.
~Shawn
theflash1932
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July 26th, 2013 13:00
No, Drive Roaming is supported - each drive is tagged with information as to its position in any virtual disks ... this data is read from the drives by the controller on boot - it "should" not be an issue.
theflash1932
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July 26th, 2013 14:00
It can be done anytime, but the server must be OFF when swapping positions.
sjensen
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July 26th, 2013 14:00
Yeah, I thought so. Since I want to move all four at once I didn't want to hot swap them and run the risk of having the array try and rebuild itself for each moved drive. Thanks for the confirmation.
sjensen
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July 26th, 2013 14:00
Can this still be done at any time after booting the system for the first time and going through the initial setup? I'd like to be able to do the first boot to confirm the RAID arrays were configured correctly and which drives are a part of the four drive RAID-5 array rather than assuming that it's the rightmost four drives ;-)
I would then shut down the server and swap the physical drive positions and then reboot. (Yes the drives are hot-swappable).
theflash1932
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July 26th, 2013 14:00
Yeah, what would happen if you hot-swapped them to move them is that after your removed the first drive, the array would be degraded and that disk would then have to be rebuilt into the array upon reinsertion - doing that with each drive would be a very time-costly operation. Good luck.
sjensen
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July 26th, 2013 18:00
Worked just fine. Thanks for the quick response!