HP RAID Array not using hot spare with predictive failure

[BenyG]

I have a HP Proliant DL 380 with among others a RAID 5 array with three disks and a hot spare.

Two of the disks are showing as 'predicrive failure' which is of course not a good scenario. How do I force it to start using the hot spare? I understand that it will normally only start using it after a failure has occured but how do I use ACL start buliding onto it straight away - bearing in mind I have 2/3 disks showing predictive failure?


Thanks,


Benjamin

 

[burtsbees]

I'd boot to the firmware update cd and update firmware. I have had good luck with predictive failures and actual failures coming back to life.
If you don't want to do that, replace the drives, one at a time. With a hot spare, you can lose both of them, though the RAID will be degraded.

Burt

 

[BenyG]

Thanks for your post.

Eventually I just pulled out the predictove-failure HD which then forced it to use to start building onto the hot spare.

Benjamin

 

[TheLad]

Until the disk actually does fail, it won't utilise the hot spare. Your server was only predicting that the drive may fail, but as Burt said most of those issues can be resolved with a firmware upgrade.

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"Insert funny comment in here!"
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[burtsbees]

This is very important, especially when dealing with MSA1000's. If the firmware is not up to date in one of those, for example, I have seen them fail multiple mirrors on different backplanes (as they are split) when replacing (hot) a failed drive! There are known issues with replacing pred failure drives with HP---ALWAYS keep the firmware up to date!
You can also look and see how many read/writes it's missing...

Burt