sasamir1

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sasamir1

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October 25th, 2009 05:00

CX4 RG configuration

Hi All,

I'm a new bee to CX4-480, when trying to create a RG of 1+0 type > using 2 drives Bus 0 Encl 0 Disk 0 or any drives from this enclosure along with 2 drives from Bus1 Encl 0 Disk 0 and 1 I get a warning message "for power related". What does it relate to?
I created the RG using 2 disks from Bus 1 Encl 0 and Bus1 Encl1.Wouldn't we able to create any RG of 1+0 from this Bus 0.

Appreciate any help or suggestion.

regards,
Samir
  • RRR

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    Posted November 9th, 2009 02:00

    I was merely pointing out that the way you described it, how the 4 disks are bound together when you're using RAID1/0. The order in which you choose the drives will be Mirror 1 PRI, Mirror 1 SEC, Mirror 2 PRI, Mirror 2 SEC and so on, so if you'd like to use 2 DAE's for your RAID1/0, I think you should have the PRI's on one DAe and the SEC's on the other DAE.

    DAE2  01   02   03   04   05   06   07   08   09   10   11   12   13   14   15
                             SEC1 SEC2
    DAE1  01   02   03   04   05   06   07   08   09   10   11   12   13   14   15
                             PRI1 PRI2
    


    So in short: aren't you able to create the RG if you choose the disks in another order ?
  • jefflymer

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    Posted October 26th, 2009 08:00

    i believe this is a known issue depending on the level of your FLARE code. the warning should not prevent you from completing the RG creation.
  • AranH1

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    Posted October 26th, 2009 09:00

    You can create a RAID10 group using disks from that enclosure and another, but If you create a RAID Group with drives from BUS 0 ENCL 0 and any other enclosure you run risk of data corruption in the event of a power loss. This is because the drives in BUS 0 ENCL 0 are powered through the SPS which will keep the enclosure online long enough to shut the array down gracefully in the event of a power failure. So some of the disks will be offline for that RAID Group during a power failure.

    Since you are creating a RAID10 group with half the disks in one enclosure, and half in another enclosure, you are minimizing the possibility of data loss in the event of a power outage (whereas if you were using RAID5 you would lose data). But I would think you are still at risk and you would be better off to use drives from another enclosure.
  • kelleg

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    Posted October 26th, 2009 10:00

    For example, if you take one disk from bus 0 enc 0 and one disk from bus 0 enc 1 (creating a R10), you have one disk in the first DAE - this disk is powered by the SPS. If you lose power, the SPS will keep bus 0 enc 0 powered on until the cache is dumped to disk. But the disk in bus 0 enc 1 has lost power and has shut down. If there was a write in flight to the disk in bus 0 enc 1, you do not have any way to determine if the write completed or not. When this occurs the state of the raid group is now unknown and on power restore, the raid group will need to be re-built - this is for Raid 1/0.

    glen
  • AranH1

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    Posted October 26th, 2009 10:00

    Thanks for the example Glen, based on that I would not even try and use a RAID10 group with half of the disks in bus 0 encl 0. The risks are too great.
  • sasamir1

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    Posted October 26th, 2009 21:00

    Thanks guys for the response.

    I get an alert when choosing disks from ex Bus 0 Encl 1 and Bus 1 encl 0 and so on,so I guess I can just ignore the alert for RG creation but make sure our Data center doesn't loose power at any time.

    Thanks Glen and Aran for your suggestions on creation of RG 1+0.
  • dynamox

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    Posted October 27th, 2009 06:00

    so what happens if you create a striped MetaLUN where one of the components reside in RG on B0E0, data loss ?
  • AranH1

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    Posted October 27th, 2009 08:00

    I would think massive data loss :D

    That would be like a RAID5 group losing more than one drive at a time right?
  • dynamox

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    Posted October 28th, 2009 20:00

    Uh-oh, i have a component LUN in RG on B0E0 :( . While we have datacenter UPS and generators ..i am not taking any chances, Lun migrator to the rescue (too bad we can migrate component LUNs only). Now if this is a planned shutdown of CX4, array is still getting datacenter power ..it should be fine ?
  • AranH1

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    Posted October 29th, 2009 07:00

    I would think it would be fine because in a planned shutdown you switch off power using the SPS power switch which prompts the array to start the shutdown process. This will power down the SPE and B0E0. Even though the remaining enclosures attached to the array are still powered up, they are dumb enclosures at that point and the shutting down of B0E0 will not be breaking a RAID set.