Just to confirm, when you say "Predictive Failure light blinking" , are you seeing the hard drive lights going amber and green, or just flashing amber? I ask as there are different steps for both. Now the first thing I would suggest you do is to get a complete backup of the data on the server, then make sure it is safely off the system. This is to ensure that the data is safe, if we run into any issues.
OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA) is incredibly helpful in these kinds of situations, as you can see the Raid information as well as hard drives from the OS. You can try to install OMSA and see, sometimes it will call for a reboot to see the Perc, and times you can see it without the reboot.
The drives you are listing are Partitions, which are created on the Raid Virtual Disk. So what you are seeing is not physical drives, but the drive partitions within the array. You would need OMSA to be able to see the physical layer from the OS.
The sizes listed do make sense with the 3 drive raid 5. With the 3 73GB drives, you will lose the equivalent space from one of the three hard drives for the parity stripe going across the 3 drives, which ensures redundancy. So taking that the 3 drives total 219GB, with redundancy taking 1/3 of the total space, leaves you with 146GB total usable space, minus a few GB for diagnostic/recovery partitions and such. With your 4 partitions (19.7 + 12 +12 + 91.6) it comes to 135.3GB, which puts you within the 146GB realm.
With the procedure to replace the drives I will need you to clarify above before I can confirm that.
Normally the backup would be more in depth, but it really comes down to the amount of data you are dealing with. Normally you would use Windows Server Backup or software like Backup Exec, depending on the OS installed.
The version I gave the link for is the version that you should use, 7.4.
The amber/green is a Predicted Failure. I was just making sure that that was what you were seeing. Now with dual Predicted Failures there is a chance of causing a double fault or carrying the Predicted Failure over to the new drives. So we will do one drive at a time, and hope for the best. What I recommend as well is updating the driver and firmware for the controller. This is to increase or odds of success. As an out of date controller can cause instability, and that isn't needed right now. Once the controller is updated, then we can start by going to OMSA and then under the 1st predicted failure drive's drop down, select to FORCE OFFLINE. Once the drive falls offline the select Flash drive to be certain that you pull the correct drive. After removal wait about 30 seconds and insert the replacement. You need to wait until that rebuild succeeds before repeating the FORCE OFFLINE on the second Pred Fail drive and repeat the process.
To offer some advice here as best I can, the first and foremost thing is that you need a backup of this system. Since you are in predictive failure, your system is still up and running, but at any moment it can fail, and if you loose two drives in a RAID 5 array, you will lose data and this system will do down leaving you in a very bad situation. Since this is a production server also, you may want to consider when is a good time that the system can be worked on since it is being used. The hard drives in this system are hot-swappable so as quickly as you can i would get a couple more disks and replace each one, one at a time. What you should see after each disk replacement is a rebuild of the array take place in which a lot of flashing will be going on with the hdd leds. If you manage to get open manage installed, it can give you the status of the rebuild process, and you can see when it finishes. So basically, replace one disk, let the rebuild complete, then replace the next disk and let the rebuild complete. If you need hard drives give us a try at www.xbyte.com.
Once I explained that new software (OMSA) was needed to be installed, and drivers and firmware updates are recommended, I was asked to contact Dell and get a service rep in to do the job. For our particular situation, the risk of the server going down is too high to let an amateur (me) mess with it.
I will be shadowing the rep and will learn as much as much as possible for next time!
have dell R720, recently we had a failure on 2 Hd in RAID 5 which we had to delete the RAID configuration and start over, our RAID 5 setup is on 4 600GB 15k Hard drives, I have replaced the 2 faulty Hard drives with brand new ones, yet before I even configured the RAID 5 I got Predicted failure on brand new HD, I just wanted to check if this is normal and I should replace the HD drive to.. by the way I did the update on both the driver and Firmware still the same error predictive Failure on new HD with no data and no RAID configuration..
DELL-Chris H
Moderator
•
9.7K Posts
0
April 30th, 2015 08:00
Amotomura,
Just to confirm, when you say "Predictive Failure light blinking" , are you seeing the hard drive lights going amber and green, or just flashing amber? I ask as there are different steps for both. Now the first thing I would suggest you do is to get a complete backup of the data on the server, then make sure it is safely off the system. This is to ensure that the data is safe, if we run into any issues.
OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA) is incredibly helpful in these kinds of situations, as you can see the Raid information as well as hard drives from the OS. You can try to install OMSA and see, sometimes it will call for a reboot to see the Perc, and times you can see it without the reboot.
The drives you are listing are Partitions, which are created on the Raid Virtual Disk. So what you are seeing is not physical drives, but the drive partitions within the array. You would need OMSA to be able to see the physical layer from the OS.
The sizes listed do make sense with the 3 drive raid 5. With the 3 73GB drives, you will lose the equivalent space from one of the three hard drives for the parity stripe going across the 3 drives, which ensures redundancy. So taking that the 3 drives total 219GB, with redundancy taking 1/3 of the total space, leaves you with 146GB total usable space, minus a few GB for diagnostic/recovery partitions and such. With your 4 partitions (19.7 + 12 +12 + 91.6) it comes to 135.3GB, which puts you within the 146GB realm.
With the procedure to replace the drives I will need you to clarify above before I can confirm that.
amotomura
5 Posts
0
April 30th, 2015 08:00
Hello Chris,
Thank you for the quick response!
The light is flashing both green and amber.
For the data backup, can I just use Explorer to copy and paste to an external hard drive, or do I need to do something more in-depth?
If I need OMSA, does the version need to match, or just use the latest?
Thanks,
Andrew
DELL-Chris H
Moderator
•
9.7K Posts
0
April 30th, 2015 09:00
Normally the backup would be more in depth, but it really comes down to the amount of data you are dealing with. Normally you would use Windows Server Backup or software like Backup Exec, depending on the OS installed.
The version I gave the link for is the version that you should use, 7.4.
amotomura
5 Posts
0
April 30th, 2015 09:00
I checked the computer and I'm running Windows Server 2003, I think the link posted was for 2008.
The computer does have System Backup and Restore, so I started a backup of all the hard drives using that. Will this be sufficient?
amotomura
5 Posts
0
April 30th, 2015 13:00
Hello Chris,
The backup is complete. What is next step?
By the way, what is the difference between an Amber blink, and a Green-Amber blink?
Thank you,
Andrew
DELL-Chris H
Moderator
•
9.7K Posts
0
April 30th, 2015 14:00
The amber/green is a Predicted Failure. I was just making sure that that was what you were seeing. Now with dual Predicted Failures there is a chance of causing a double fault or carrying the Predicted Failure over to the new drives. So we will do one drive at a time, and hope for the best. What I recommend as well is updating the driver and firmware for the controller. This is to increase or odds of success. As an out of date controller can cause instability, and that isn't needed right now.
Once the controller is updated, then we can start by going to OMSA and then under the 1st predicted failure drive's drop down, select to FORCE OFFLINE. Once the drive falls offline the select Flash drive to be certain that you pull the correct drive. After removal wait about 30 seconds and insert the replacement. You need to wait until that rebuild succeeds before repeating the FORCE OFFLINE on the second Pred Fail drive and repeat the process.
Let me know how it goes.
xByteSean1
7 Posts
1
May 1st, 2015 08:00
Andrew,
To offer some advice here as best I can, the first and foremost thing is that you need a backup of this system. Since you are in predictive failure, your system is still up and running, but at any moment it can fail, and if you loose two drives in a RAID 5 array, you will lose data and this system will do down leaving you in a very bad situation. Since this is a production server also, you may want to consider when is a good time that the system can be worked on since it is being used. The hard drives in this system are hot-swappable so as quickly as you can i would get a couple more disks and replace each one, one at a time. What you should see after each disk replacement is a rebuild of the array take place in which a lot of flashing will be going on with the hdd leds. If you manage to get open manage installed, it can give you the status of the rebuild process, and you can see when it finishes. So basically, replace one disk, let the rebuild complete, then replace the next disk and let the rebuild complete. If you need hard drives give us a try at www.xbyte.com.
Admin4U
112 Posts
0
May 1st, 2015 23:00
1. Get a backup of data.
2. Run a consistency check in OMSA on array(s) involved with the predictive failure drives.
3. Force one of the predictive failure drives offline and replace, ensure that a rebuild starts and completes.
4. Run a consistency check again.
5. Force 2nd predictive failure drive offline and replace and ensure rebuild completes.
amotomura
5 Posts
0
May 3rd, 2015 13:00
Thank you everyone for your advice and tips.
Once I explained that new software (OMSA) was needed to be installed, and drivers and firmware updates are recommended, I was asked to contact Dell and get a service rep in to do the job. For our particular situation, the risk of the server going down is too high to let an amateur (me) mess with it.
I will be shadowing the rep and will learn as much as much as possible for next time!
Thanks again!
Andrew
Admin4U
112 Posts
0
May 3rd, 2015 20:00
The Onsite Dell tech will not be responsible for the following, and will be your responsibility.
1. Backup of DATA.
2. Update of drivers and firmware.
SalHD
1 Message
0
June 13th, 2018 07:00
have dell R720, recently we had a failure on 2 Hd in RAID 5 which we had to delete the RAID configuration and start over, our RAID 5 setup is on 4 600GB 15k Hard drives, I have replaced the 2 faulty Hard drives with brand new ones, yet before I even configured the RAID 5 I got Predicted failure on brand new HD, I just wanted to check if this is normal and I should replace the HD drive to.. by the way I did the update on both the driver and Firmware still the same error predictive Failure on new HD with no data and no RAID configuration..