I would recommend against using the ability to break a mirror as an offline backup option. Hotswap wasn't designed with that in mind.
It may go fine 99% of the time, but that 1 case may completely down your server (or worse).
If you want offline backups, use a tape drive, RD1000 or some USB harddrive (not supported by Dell, but relatively inexpensive) or so.
Note: using 2 x 1TB in a raid 1 for boot is fine, but keep in mind that any system with a bios could never boot to a (virtual) disk that totals over 2TB.
I'm making the assumption that you're using a PERC6 controller?
If so, for #1 - your instructions are incorrect. Do not enable the SATA ports. The PERC6/i controller will support SAS or SATA without issues or reconfiguration.
Agree with the follow up about the break mirror. The only way to safely break a mirror is to cleanly shut down the server, then pull the disk. there will be errors/warnings about degraded VDs until the configuration is cleared and a new VD created. One note, you will want to perform a fast init when you recreate the configuration so that the partition table of the old disk isn't still readable on the mirror
For 7 - that should work, it will be a foreign configuration that you would need to import, and it would import as a degraded R1 array. You should be able to then mount this disk and use it.
Dev Mgr
4 Operator
•
9.3K Posts
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October 6th, 2008 13:00
It may go fine 99% of the time, but that 1 case may completely down your server (or worse).
If you want offline backups, use a tape drive, RD1000 or some USB harddrive (not supported by Dell, but relatively inexpensive) or so.
Note: using 2 x 1TB in a raid 1 for boot is fine, but keep in mind that any system with a bios could never boot to a (virtual) disk that totals over 2TB.
raiddude
36 Posts
0
October 15th, 2008 20:00
I'm making the assumption that you're using a PERC6 controller?
If so, for #1 - your instructions are incorrect. Do not enable the SATA ports. The PERC6/i controller will support SAS or SATA without issues or reconfiguration.
Agree with the follow up about the break mirror. The only way to safely break a mirror is to cleanly shut down the server, then pull the disk. there will be errors/warnings about degraded VDs until the configuration is cleared and a new VD created. One note, you will want to perform a fast init when you recreate the configuration so that the partition table of the old disk isn't still readable on the mirror
For 7 - that should work, it will be a foreign configuration that you would need to import, and it would import as a degraded R1 array. You should be able to then mount this disk and use it.