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RAID disk roll back procedure
Hello,
I'm about to do some maintenance on a critical physical server. I'm in the process of writing up a fall back plan and would appreciate a second opinion.
I have 3 disks in my R610 server.
Virtual Disk 0
slot 0 - online
slot 1 - online
slot 2 - ready (dedicated hot spare)
Prior to maintenance I'm planning on unassigning my hot spare (virtual disks within Dell OMSA and choose assign\unassign dedicated hot spare).
I'll then do the following:
1. Power off the server
2. Pull out disk in slot 1 and put to one side (label roll back)
3. Do my server maintenance as needed
If all goes according to plan, power off server put "roll back" disk back in slot 1 and power on. Choose no to import foreign config.
If I need to roll back:
1. Power off server
2. Put "roll back" disk back in slot 1 and choose yes to import foreign config on reboot.
Please advise if this will work\can be improved.
Many thanks
pcmeiners
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April 1st, 2014 09:00
There is no need to power off the server to obtain a" roll back disk". just pull one of the raid 1 pair disks, let the hot spare take over, let rebuild complete before proceeding to maintenance/patching; I personally do this a few times per year on servers as an emergency backup for Active Directory restoration, rotating roll back disks to a safe/user's home before the AD Tombstone period make the last roll back disk useless.
Personally I would get another disk, keep the "roll back" as an emergency resurrection disk; trust me, if you really need to use the roll back in an emergency, it almost a religious experience as the desktop appears...especially if the server took days to build :emotion-1: . Over the last 23 years guessing I had to resurrect maybe 25-30 times, with Percs/Intel onboard raid , it worth going for the extra disk.
Roll back procedure to the same controller, on same server...
Roll back procedure varies a bit, low end vs high raid adapter, no hot spare vs hot spare in place. The last couple Percs I did, years ago, I unassigned the hot spare, pulled a drive as a roll back, reassigned the hot spare, let rebuild take place. To reinstate from roll back, I shut down server, pulled power plugs, removed all the drives from the controller. Place roll back drive in drive bay, restarted, array comes up a degraded, reinstituted a good drive as a hot spare, array rebuilds, I do not remember having to foreign import, or having to answer COD (configuration on disk) question .
"If all goes according to plan, power off server put "roll back" disk back in slot 1 and power on. Choose no to import foreign config."
With the server ON, array as optimal, with the Perc controllers I use, I just pull a drive as a roll back, and replace it with an older rollback, it just rebuilds automatically, no foreign import or COD messages; with or without a hot spare.
Others please answer this, as my procedure went from an array with the hot spare unassigned before pulling the roll back, and it has been a while back..
What raid controller do you have?
aetius80
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April 2nd, 2014 06:00
Hi PC,
It's a Dell Poweredge R610 with a PERC 6i controller. The reason I opted to unassign the hot spare is to save time during (i.e. no need for a rebuild).
Presumably OMSA will indicate when a rebuild is complete?
Thanks
PS - have to use an alternative account as I lost the password to ettringite99
pcmeiners
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April 2nd, 2014 06:00
OMSA will indicate when the rebuild completes, gives a percentage. If the server is lightly used, you can generally tell when it completes by monitoring the LED on the drives.
theflash1932
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April 2nd, 2014 08:00
https://ecomm.dell.com/myaccount/forgotpassword.aspx?c=us&l=en&s