Server Administrator Storage Management 8.3 User’s Guide

Assigning And Unassigning Global Hot Spare

CAUTION: The SAS 6/iR controller enables you to assign two physical disks as global hot spare. Assigning a physical disk as a global hot spare on a SAS 6/iR controller is likely to cause data loss from the physical disk. If the system or boot partition resides on the physical disks, it may be destroyed. You should only assign physical disks that do not contain critical data.

Does my controller support this feature? See Supported Features.

A global hot spare is an unused backup disk that is part of the disk group. Hot spares remain in standby mode. When a physical disk that is used in a virtual disk fails, the assigned hot spare is activated to replace the failed physical disk without interrupting the system or requiring your intervention. When a hot spare is activated, it rebuilds the data for all redundant virtual disks that were using the failed physical disk.

You can change the hot spare assignment by unassigning a disk and choosing another disk as needed. You can also assign more than one physical disk as a global hot spare.

NOTE: On SAS 6/iR controllers, you cannot assign physical disks that have boot partitions, as hot spares.

NOTE: On PERC S100 and S300 controllers, if there is free space available on the global hot spare, it continues to function as a spare even after replacing a failed physical disk.

Global hot spares must be assigned and unassigned manually. They are not assigned to specific virtual disks. If you want to assign a hot spare to a virtual disk (it replaces any physical disk that fails in the virtual disk), then use the Assign and Unassign Dedicated Hot Spare.

NOTE: When deleting virtual disks, all assigned global hot spares may be automatically unassigned when the last virtual disk associated with the controller is deleted. When the last virtual disk of a disk group is deleted, all assigned dedicated hot spares automatically become global hot spares.

NOTE: For PERC H310, H700, H710, H710P, H800, H810, H330, H730, H730P, H830, and PERC FD33xD/FD33xS controllers, if any of the drives you selected are in the Spun Down state, the following message is displayed: The current physical drive is in the spun down state. Executing this task on this drive takes additional time, because the drive needs to spun up.The current physical drive is in the spun down state. Executing this task on this drive takes additional time, because the drive needs to spun up.

You should be familiar with the size requirements and other considerations associated with hot spares.