PERC S300 RAID 5 Virtual Disk Rebuilding Issue (for Power Edge T310)

Question

Hello Colleagues,

We've got an issue with our PowerEdge T310 server's Raid configuration. First of all, our system is not a server & is being used as a stand alone machine with no role defined as we're using it as an engineering station of our refinery's DCS. We've installed 3 hard drives (250 GB each) in RAID 5 configuration which sums up to a 498 GB virtual disk space as per RAID calculations.

Right now, the PERC S300 Virtual Disk Management shows Raid 5 virtual disk in 'Degraded (R/W)' mode. First 2 physical disks are 'Online' & working fine whereas the 3rd HD is in 'Ready' state. We removed this drive from our machine & formatted it by connecting to another system. The disk is in a healthy state & found to be working fine.
When it is plugged back in & initialized using 'Perc S300 Initialization' option, it again shows up 'Ready state' of the physical drive while RAID 5 Virtual Disk detail still shows first 2 drives as Online & no other disk available in it. I've tried assigning this particular disk as Global Hot Spare. By doing this, it turns its state to 'Spare' but doesn't initiate RAID rebuilding.

We'll be grateful if someone helps us out with the disk rebuilding procedure so as to get our RAID config normalized from Degraded state.

theflash1932 · Answer

Your disk may be bad ... I'd recommend running diagnostics on the disk.  If the disk fails, it needs to be replaced and is likely the reason it won't rebuild.  If it passes, then there may be an issue with your RAID 5.

farhan.ahmed · Answer

Thanks Chris. All drives are 250 GB & SATA for sure. However, I assume their speeds are same as well as these are original pre-loaded drives that came with the system from Dell US. I'll verify these specs tomorrow.

DELL-Chris H · Answer

Farhan.Ahmed,

Could you confirm that the replacement drive is of equal or greater size and speed as the other 2 drives, as well as confirm it is a SAS/SATA drive as the other 2 are. I don't believe the drive is failed as it showing ready. I am curious as if it is compatible with the array.

Let me know what you find

farhan.ahmed · Answer

Thanks Flash. Yes, I didn't replace it with a new disk & it's still in Ready state. I actually plugged that drive in to another system just to check its health. Formatting via My Computer was successful. I also copied a text file into the drive just to make sure if its Reading/ Writing & it too was successful.

theflash1932 · Answer

From what he said, there is no indication he has replaced the disk (although that would surely make sense) ... I assumed it to be the original disk2.  Bad disks can show 'ready' too.

DELL-Chris H · Answer

Will it allow you to init the PHYSICAL drive. I am curious if the controller isn't seeing it as a blank disk.

theflash1932 · Answer

I would still run diagnostics on it.

farhan.ahmed · Answer

Yes, I tried initializing it both ways. Firstly, using PERC S300 Initialization option. It took a little while before retaining its Ready state. Next time, I tried Non RAID Initialization option, this time the drive turned its state to Non RAID. After rebooting, when the status of drive was checked from Server Manager > Disk Management, it displayed an unallocated 232 GB new drive space which was of no practical use.

farhan.ahmed · Answer

Guys, the issue got resolved via OMSA. The drive was Ok & RAID started rebuilding itself as soon as it was assigned as Global hot spare through OMSA. I need to ask one more thing: Shall I unassign that drive as hot spare now so that it shows Online status with the new drive as well. Right now RAID 5 is Normal with first 2 drives Online & the third one as Spare.

JToering · Answer

>I need to ask one more thing: Shall I unassign that drive as hot spare now so that it shows Online status with the new drive as well.<Yes.  I'm surprised nobody answered that.

theflash1932 · Answer

It's not that nobody knew the answer ... nobody works these forums "full time", and many of us are volunteers with real lives:) ... sometimes things fall through the cracks. I suspect that the opening statement ("resolved") led to the end of the post being overlooked. I'm not entirely sure what was even asked ... the RAID 5 can't be normal with "two drives online and the third one as Spare". If there were really two online and one set as spare, than the RAID 5 would be degraded, in which case, not only would unassigning the hot-spare not result in it changing to "online", but the answer to the question would be 'no', as then it would never rebuild into the array, and the more important issue is that some problem is still preventing the controller from rebuilding the array.

I'm guessing that one way or another he resolved his issue 4 months ago.

Maaz.Khan · Answer

Hello!

The server machine regarding which the topic was initiated got corrupted 3 weeks ago,in order to get it UP and RUNNING we had to format the HDDs and reassign them in RAID, had to do it myself as local DELL's support was not available, eventually was successful in configuring the RAID-5 (previous configuration) and OS(Windows Web Server 2008 SP2).

Curious to check the Raid i pulled one of the HDDs out and re-inserted it as i have read that it rebuilds the Array automatically, but doing so caused a "Degrade" in RAID and i was clueless about how to recover its RAID.

After some searching found this article and resolved the degrade issue as Farhan.ahmed has mentioned.

if some of you are still out there, it would be great if you answer the following queries

1. Why shouldn't i Unassign the Global Hot Spare?

2. How should i Troubleshoot, what is preventing the controller from rebuilding the Array?

Regards,

Maaz Khan

PowerEdge HDD/SCSI/RAID

PERC S300 RAID 5 Virtual Disk Rebuilding Issue (for Power Edge T310)

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