Skip to main content
Start a Conversation

Unsolved

This post is more than 5 years old

hemerich

83 Posts

9423

February 2nd, 2007 13:00

need to break/recreate a mirror

I will soon be upgrading my SQL server. I currently have a Poweredge 2650 with a mirrored drive set in the media bay for the OS (C: drive) and a RAID 5 array of 4 drives for the apps (D: drive). I would like to physically remove 1 of the mirrored drives and create a second set of mirrored drives for the same machine. I would then remove the RAID 5 array and replace it with a single large capacity SCSI disk. I would do a tape restore of the data to the new single D: drive, and see if it all goes well. If it does, I would back up to tape, put the 4 RAID 5 disks back in, and restore from tape, keeping the new mirrored set. If not, I would put the old one back, and it's as though nothing happened. My question is how do I separate the 2 drives in the mirror set so I can use each with a new 2nd drive?

DELL-GaryS

777 Posts

February 2nd, 2007 21:00

Hi,
 
  Assuming you have a hardware RAID... you just remove the drive from the server. (power applied but no I/O if you can help it), The RAID 0 will go into a degraded state, install the replacement drive, and the controller will see the replacement and automatically start rebuilding the RAID 1.
 
  The back out procedure is to power down remove both RAID 1 drives, reinstall the previously removed RAID 1 drive in it's original slot. bring up the controller BIOS it should recognize the drive as the LD0 drive and note that the array is degraded, and allow you to boot from it. you then install the other original drive, and it will rebuild back to the old version.
 
The RAID 5  and single large drive will need a bit more thought, here is how I would approach that.
 
  • the controller will need to have to have it's configuration cleared
  • drive sets must be removed from the system with power off prior to clearing the controller configuration
  • clear the configuration using the controller BIOS (AMI/LSI) or delete the RAID 5 array in the BIOS (Adaptec)
  • reinstall the OS drive set, and let it detect the configuration from the drives
  • power down again and install the large cap HD, create a RAID 0 array with that drive

tTe back out procedure has you repeating the steps, this time deleting the raid 0, and letting the controller pull in the configurations from both drive sets.

Creating two OS RAID 1 sets is a simple application of the back out procedure I wrote above, just use the second new drive on the rebuild instead of the other old drive.

  Of course I will advise doing a tape backup of the OS partition of both sets.

Good luck,

Dell-GaryS

 

hemerich

83 Posts

February 3rd, 2007 12:00

THANK YOU!!

Was this post helpful?

View All

No Events found!

Top