PE2500 - Drive failed in RAID5 set

Hi Adam,

  With the app installed, hot swapping the failed drive or even reseating it will kick off a rebuild attempt, and manually selecting rebuild is needed only if it does not automatically start the rebuild.

I would advise array manager in this case, older systems and controllers may be dropped from support in newly developed applications.

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R37505&SystemID=PWE_PNT_PII_1300&os=WNT5&osl=en&deviceid=745&devlib=0&typecnt=2&vercnt=18&formatcnt=2&fileid=42779

Again thanks for the fast response.

We had taken the server down because our data center provider had some planned maintenance they were performing that caused the power to be cut to our cage. It was down for about 6 hours. Out of nearly 50 servers (mixed dell and no-name) that we shut down that night, this was the only one to have a disk problem.

I tried reseating it and rebooting the server a couple times, but to no avail.
I have a replacement drive, but would there be any merit in reseating the existing drive after the software is installed to see if it will attempt a rebuild?
If it can't I presume it will fail and I won't be any worse off than I am now.

- Adam

Thanks for the quick reply.
I presume then once I have the Array Mgr software installed all I need to do is replace the failed drive and select "rebuild" from within Array Mgr?
- Adam

Gary,
There were no smart errors logged on the system that I can see.
I'll have to wait until I can reboot to see which RAID card it has (lsi or adaptec).
I'll follow your advice in the previous message and proceed accordingly.
I will post results here.
Thanks
- Adam

Hi again Adam,

  Attempting a rebuild on a failed hard drive is something Dell recommends, however a little investigation before hand would tell you if it's a good idea.

 If you have the integerated PERC 3/DI controller, the BIOS on the controller are not going to be of much use in diagnosing the issue unless you can pull the controller logs and understand what you are reading. I usually use FAST CLI on this controller instead of array manager, there are a number of very useful command line functions that allow you to diagnose the drives. (Array manager and FAST cannot both be installed at the same time, uninstall one before trying the other) Essentially if you find media errors (Grown defects in adaptec speak) in any of the "GOOD" drives in the array, a rebuild is not going to work, it will fail when it gets to the location of the error. Also if the "BAD" drive is not recognized or shows 0 capacity, rebuilding it is a no go condition.

  If you have one of the LSI / AMI controllers like the PERC 3/DC, 3/SC and the like, going into the bios allows you to quickly pull up the drives in the objects, physical objects menu and quickly go thru all the drives, again media errors on the online drives are going to cause any rebuild attempt to fail, and the bad drive not recognized or 0 capacity is a bad thing.

  You could also check out the system event logs and see if the drive was previously reporting a SMART or predictive failure message, in which case do not rebuild the drive.

 

Adam,

  Check your device manager, you should be able to tell which controller you have there. The FAST is ONLY for use with the Adaptec controller.

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R24862&SystemID=PWE_PNT_P3C_2500&os=WNT5&osl=en&deviceid=1375&devlib=0&typecnt=4&vercnt=1&formatcnt=1&fileid=26183

Message Edited by DELL-GaryS on 04-06-2006 11:33 AM

One more thought.
Where do I get the FAST tool, and would it be a good idea to install and run it first prior to installing Arrat Mgr since they can not both be present at the same time?
Thanks
- Adam

Gary,
Device Manager lists it as a PERC 3/Di Adaptec RAID controller.
The driver version is 2.7.1.4944.
I won't know the firmware version until I can reboot later on.
How do I know if the driver and F/W version would be supported by a particular version of FAST?
Thanks
- Adam

We took this discussion offline, He cannot use FAST with his W2k and PERC2 drivers version 2.71, the last FAST version that supported this O/S is version 2.5, so he would have needed to still have 2.5 drivers and F/W to be able to use the FAST.

Gary,

Well I got Array Manager installed without a problem.
I rebooted and found that the firmware and driver versions did indeed match as you said they should (2.71).
The only thing that threw me off for a while was after I installed array manager and rebooted, the failed drive (slot 2) whose LED had been blinking orange, was now a steady green. Going into the controller BIOS (CTRL+A) the failed drive was still showing as failed though so I put in the replacement drive in its place.
The rebuild started immediately and all was well.
Having Array Mgr installed showed me that the battery needed to be reconditioned so I took care of that at the same time.

This afternoon another drive (slot 1) failed.
I am in the process of finding a replacement drive.
Since these are all 9GB drives (and seem to be old and failing) I was thinking about buying all newer, larger drives.

What is the largest size drive that the 2500 will support?

Thanks
- Adam

Hi Adam,

 The largest drives I see in the recommended spares listing for the PE2500 is 300 GB SCSI 10K RPM (P/N UJ673), or 146 GB SCSI 15K RPM (P/N XJ656). Get ones with the standard cache, not the large audiovisual optimized cache.

 I'm glad Array manager seems to be filling the requirements. Do drill down and right click on the physical drives , select properties and see if the Array Manager lists any errors.