Hot Swap HDs in ML530 and increasing capacity

[tshotter]

Hi guys, i have a few questions about hot swapping hard drives in my compaq ML530.

basically i have several servers all with the same configuration, they have 2 x 9.1Gb drives (raid 2) and 5 x 18.2Gb Drives (raid 5)

i have two things i need to achive,

firstly on one server a dreaded red light has appeared on one of the 9.1's do i literally pull the drive out and put a new one in? does it need to be formatted and do i do it with Windows 2003 running or while the machine is off?
if i stick an 18.2Gb drive in rather than a 9.1 will it cause any problems? or will it just run with 9.1Gb usable and be quite happy?

and secondly i want to add a 9.1Gb drive to the raid2 setup to push the usable up to 18Gb, how do i go about doing this? again can i use 18.2gb drives to act as 9.1s?

9.1Gb drives are harder to acquire than 18.2s

Thanks in advance for any help

 

[blister911]

tshotter,

Yes, you should be able to hot swap the failed drive, assuming the drives are the "hot-swap" type. I don't remember if the ML530 has a non hot-swappable drive option. Our ML530 G1s are all hot-swappable.

As for replacing it with a larger drive, it will only use 9.1 GB of it. However, I've never been an advocate of running the server with mixed drives in an array as a long-term solution. If I was you, I would buy a second 18.2 GB drive and replace them both. Then you will have a 9.1 GB drive for a spare in case of drive failure on a different server.

Check this thread for details on expanding the array and extending the drive:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1296724&page=1

 

[spi200]

Hi

As already emntioned you can add the 18gb drive to replace the faulty 9.1Gb drive - I have doen this without any probs many times. Seeing that you want to end up with more space then the suggestion to have 2 * 18Gb drives is a good idea as yuo then have the option to expand and extend the array. This will allow you to use that space. ie add another partition etc.

There are a few other TID's on the forum if you seach for extending or expanding an array. It does not matter what raid level it is as they can all be extended if your controller supports it.

Regards


Dave

 

[TheLad]

I agree with the above. Providing you ensure that you have decent backups prior to any of this activity with the server, you should be ok (backups are just incase....)

--------------------------------------
"Insert funny comment in here!"
--------------------------------------