Should I power down the server before removing the old drives and insert the new drives? If so, before I power down the server, do I execute the Offline command on the six drives I am taking out? Thanks.
You could do it either way, but for the sake of simplicity I would power down. If you remove the disks while they are powered up then the controller will see the removal and start marking the drives as failed. If you need to reinsert the drives you would have to deal with foreign configurations and rebuilds if you remove them while the server is online.
If you remove them while the server is offline then you it will be easier to bring the drives back online if you need to put them back in to recover data. You do not need to offline the drives if you remove them while the server is off. If you decide to remove them while the server is on then I would offline them until the array goes to a failed state.
Is it okay to do this using OMSA since it is not the boot array or is it better to use the PERC BIOS utility?
It does not matter. You can use OMSA or boot into the controller BIOS.
I would recommend that you NOT delete the current RAID 10. I would suggest that you remove the 6 drives that you are going to replace and set them aside. Use tape or something to mark which slot you removed the drives from, so that you can put them back in the same slot if you need to. The PERC 6 is able to bring the array back online even if you don't put them back into the same slots, but it is an old practice that I still prefer to do just in case.
After you remove the old drives then put the new drives in and create your new RAID array. After the array is created you can initialize and format the new logical disk in the operating system. Once all of that is complete you can restore your data from the backup. If you encounter issues with the data you can pull the new drives out and put the old ones back in. The array configuration and data is all stored on the drives, so this will give you another option for data recovery if something goes wrong with the backup.
Once you are satisfied that all of the data is intact on the new array then you can discard the old drives.
Should I power down the server before removing the old drives and insert the new drives? If so, before I power down the server, do I execute the Offline command on the six drives I am taking out? Thanks.
Daniel My
10 Elder
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6.2K Posts
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October 10th, 2014 10:00
You could do it either way, but for the sake of simplicity I would power down. If you remove the disks while they are powered up then the controller will see the removal and start marking the drives as failed. If you need to reinsert the drives you would have to deal with foreign configurations and rebuilds if you remove them while the server is online.
If you remove them while the server is offline then you it will be easier to bring the drives back online if you need to put them back in to recover data. You do not need to offline the drives if you remove them while the server is off. If you decide to remove them while the server is on then I would offline them until the array goes to a failed state.
Thanks
Daniel My
10 Elder
•
6.2K Posts
0
October 9th, 2014 17:00
Hello
It does not matter. You can use OMSA or boot into the controller BIOS.
I would recommend that you NOT delete the current RAID 10. I would suggest that you remove the 6 drives that you are going to replace and set them aside. Use tape or something to mark which slot you removed the drives from, so that you can put them back in the same slot if you need to. The PERC 6 is able to bring the array back online even if you don't put them back into the same slots, but it is an old practice that I still prefer to do just in case.
After you remove the old drives then put the new drives in and create your new RAID array. After the array is created you can initialize and format the new logical disk in the operating system. Once all of that is complete you can restore your data from the backup. If you encounter issues with the data you can pull the new drives out and put the old ones back in. The array configuration and data is all stored on the drives, so this will give you another option for data recovery if something goes wrong with the backup.
Once you are satisfied that all of the data is intact on the new array then you can discard the old drives.
Thanks
argolfer
3 Posts
0
October 10th, 2014 08:00
Should I power down the server before removing the old drives and insert the new drives? If so, before I power down the server, do I execute the Offline command on the six drives I am taking out? Thanks.
argolfer
3 Posts
0
October 13th, 2014 07:00
Everything went well. Thanks for the quick and concise responses.