Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller 9 (iDRAC9) Version 3.00.00.00 User's Guide

Assigning or unassigning physical disk as global hot spare

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.

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 see Assigning or unassigning dedicated hot spares.

When deleting virtual disks, all assigned global hot spares may be automatically unassigned when the last virtual disk associated with the controller is deleted.

If you reset the configuration, the virtual disks are deleted and all the hot spares are unassigned.

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

Before assigning a physical disk as a global hot spare:

• Make sure that Lifecycle Controller is enabled.
• If there are no disk drives available in ready state, insert additional disk drives and make sure that the drives are in ready state.
• If physical disks are in non-RAID mode convert them to RAID mode using iDRAC interfaces such as iDRAC web interface, RACADM, Redfish or WSMan, or <CTRL+R>.
  NOTE During POST, press F2 to enter System Setup or Device Setup. CTRL+R option is no longer supported for PERC 10. CTRL+R only works with PERC 9 while boot mode is set to BIOS.

If you have assigned a physical disk as a global hot spare in Add to Pending Operation mode, the pending operation is created but a job is not created. Then, if you try to unassign the same disk as global hot spare, the assign global hot spare pending operation is cleared.

If you have unassigned a physical disk as a global hot spare in Add to Pending Operation mode, the pending operation is created but a job is not created. Then, if you try to assign the same disk as a global hot spare, the unassign global hot spare pending operation is cleared.

If the last VD is deleted, the global hot spares also returns to ready state.

If a PD is already a global hot spares, user can still assign it again as a global hot spares.