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Mirrored HDD 4

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sushi600

Technical User
Aug 22, 2002
37
US
New to the BCM system (we just picked one up). After looking at the insides, the HDD looked like a standard 20Gig HDD. I know that they offered a mirroring option, but is it necessary to purchase a kit from Nortel? Figured that since it's based on NT 4.0, there may be some way of dropping in an off the shelf hard drive (same brand/size) and mirroring it somehow.
 
I never buyed a BCM without redundance built in...

Check if you have the RAID card in the BCM. If not, the BCM run on embeded NT4 so, you have to find a the same RAID card to use the driver for it...

You will be very lucky if you find it.

Give us some news if you try it...

Good Luck!!!
 
To my knowledge (from a job one of my techs were on that both drives had to be replaced)- the mirrored can be the same type without being pre-programmed. The BCM Primary would have to be the pre-programmed one only.

Once the BCM recognizes the Mirror Drive it will copy all the database info from the Primary.

This same job was also equipped with redundant power supplies.

Steve
tele-dataservices.com
 
At the place where your techs were, did they already have the RAID option purchased?

Not too familiar with the BCM, but I can see two scenarios:

1) The client may have already purchased the RAID option, and when the two drives were replaced, it saw the second one as blank and tried to rebuild it thinking it was a failed drive.

2) The BCM by default has RAID, and the "kit" they offer is simply a second hard drive. (I have never seen the kit, so not sure what is in it).

Simply looking for a way to see if the RAID option can be achieved without purchasing a kit from Nortel (more curiousity... because I'm sure it will void some kind of warranty).

Thanks for the replies all!

Best Regards
 
It is not software RAID.
Nortel sells a kit.
The drivers for NT are preloaded in the BCM harddrive.

The RAID controller has one IDE connector for the primary IDE interface and two additional IDE connectors for the mirrored drives.

NTAB3418 BCM400 RAID (Redundant Hard Drive) Upgrade Kit
NTAB9861 BCM200 RAID (Redundant Hard Drive) Upgrade Kit


 
This is a complete list of all mirrored drive kits for all hardware offerings.

It is not software RAID.
Nortel sells a kit.
The drivers for NT are preloaded in the BCM harddrive.

The RAID controller has one IDE connector for the primary IDE interface and two additional IDE connectors for the mirrored drives.

NTAB3418 BCM400 RAID (Redundant Hard Drive) Upgrade Kit
NTAB9861 BCM200 RAID (Redundant Hard Drive) Upgrade Kit
NTAB9747 BCM 2.5_FP-1 Mirrored Hard Disk Drive Upgrade Kit (BCM100 for both 2LAN and LAN/WAN Platforms).
 
If you must mirror the drive and do not wish to purchase the kit you can (void your warranty) add a floppy drive, a second hard drive, boot from a Partition Magic rescue disk set, and clone the HD. I did this with an older BCM with the 8 gig drive and it now has a 120 Gig Maxtor.
Remember, none of this is supported and if it blows up you are out of luck. I am providing this information for interested people, but I see no place for this in a real world usage as no vendor wouuld support it.
You can also upgrde the memory and CPU to the point where an older 1000 will run as fast as a new BCM400. The limit is that you must have at least an MSC card version 1.A or you cannot go past 2.5.
NARSBARS

Spare email address:
TGARNCOS@Yahoo.com
I'll risk spam to talk to professionals
 
NARSBARS I have often upgraded 1000 cabinets to 3.6
The old cabinet requires a MSC 1A release a 20GB drive and 256 MB of PC100 RAM.
In the case of older cabinets with 8.6 GB drives you can replace the drive with a BCM v3.0 20GB FRU, and upgrade the memory.
Once you are at 3.0 you can upgrade to 3.6 with the software kit. Do not attempt to upgrade an older cabinet without replacing the drive to 3.0 first and then upgrading to 3.6.

David Brillert
 
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