Booting existing disk with a new Smart Array 431 1

[manikm]

Guys,

I have a ML350 which is being used as a test server (nothing critical on the disk) but I would still like to keep the disks current config.

The OS is NT4 Terminal server

At the moment, the server holds one SCSI 36gig disk, and is booting from the standard 2 channel scsi controller card (forget the name - its not important)

Is it possible, to take the SCSI lead from the current SCSI controller, and fit it to the 431 card, so that it boots it this disk.

Bear in mind the disk doesnt "know" about the 431, as a driver has never been installed on it....what if i configure the 431 to be RAID 0, does it trash the disk? As i don't want that!!!!

The reason why we want it like this, is because the server is also acting as warm standby server. The idea being, that if one of our other ML350's (they are mirrored setups)goes down (except the disk), we could take them and put them in this server, and fire it straight back up.....

I see problems. Either with the 431 driver not being on the current disk, if i did manage to get it to boot from the 431 - i would then need to reconfiugure the RAID card for a mirrored setup if we ever did use it in an emergency, and then would it WRITE bad info and reck that pair?

Any ideas would be grateful....THANKS!!!

 

[adagio]

I'm afraid that you can not convert a SCSI installed disk to a one on a Smart Array controller. The disk need to be an Array and of course being a single disk it would have to be RAID 0. Unfortunately a standard SCSI installation is not a RAID-o disk. For a start, the block sizes are different. In this case you would have to backup and retore.

Also, if you were to use a RAID-0 array, you can not convert it to a mirror.

Hope that helps

 

[manikm]

Adagio, thanks for your reply.
It was most helpful.

The part where u say, "if you were to use a RAID-0 array, you can not convert it to a mirror" not really relevant, as the disks (mirrored setup from another server) would be inserted, so all we'd need to do would be to reconfigure the smart array to be a mirror (raid1) - that would work wouldnt it....

but on the whole you are saying that i cant use the current SCSI installed disk on a RAID0 anyway - which makes the whole thing academic.

THANKS!!!