Need Help Replacing a Disk on Dell 2500 w/ Raid 5

[mmasahd]

I have a Dell Poweredge 2500SC server (oddly the service tag is for a 2400 but it is a 2500SC for sure) and it has a 3 disk raid 5 array, and is running Windows 2000 server as the OS. The Raid controller is a PERC 3/Di. I have Dells Open Manage software installed (version 3.0) I'm an electrical engineer, but am a bit of a newbie to servers, Win 2k server, Raids, etc. I have looked at Dells Knowlege base as well as the documentation that came with the system. I have found what I "think" are procedures for doing what I need to do, but they all seem to be written with the assumption that the reader knows more that I do. That is to say that they are not "step by step" instructions making no assumptions about the readers level of expertise and have much needed detail missing.

I have two main issues that I need help with.
1. The second drive (1) will sometimes go off line thus leaving my two volumes on the raid degraded. The last time this happened was about 6 months ago. Rebooting the system will bring it back on line, and the system rebuilds the data and the volumes are no longer degraded. Coincedentaly, one day before the drive went off line this time, the system reported that the Raid controller battery needed reconditioned. I rebooted, the drive came back and got rebuilt. 10 hours later, it went off line again. I am going to recondition the battery and see if that resolves the issue, but I still want to know how to replace this drive if that fails. I have 2 spare drives on the shelf as well as drive trays. Is it as simple as shutting the system down, replacing the drive and on bootup, the system detects the drive, partitions, formats and restores data to it??? I can't seen to find a written procedure for doing this. PLEASE HELP ME!!!

2. I want to add an aditional drive (or two) to the system and split the new space between the two volumes I already have. (i.e. add 80% to volume 1 and 20% to volume 2) I beleive that this can be done without having to scrub everything and start from scratch. Is that correct and what is the procedure?

ANY advice would be GREATLY appreciated.
Mark

 

[ABOzIT]

I can answer the first question for you.

Have you got Array Manager installed? If so, all you need to do is to launch it and look in the tree stucture on the left pane.

Expand Servername\Arrays\PERC Subsystem\PERC 3Di Controller\Array Group\Virtual Disk.

Under the Virtual Disk folder you will see your 3 array disks labelled Array Disk 0:0, Array Disk 0:1 and Array Disk 0:2.

Once you have identified which disk it is you want to replace just right click the disk and select "Prepare to remove".

The rest of this is going from memeory as it's been a while since I've done this.......

I think it will give you a message saying that it's safe to remove the drive. Just release the drive, slide it out and replace it with the new one. The data should now rebuild over the 3 drives and all should be fine.

It's a very painless operation and you don't need to power down the server to do it.

Check out the help in Array Manager for more information if needed.

Hope this helps.

 

[NickFerrar]

For the second part of your question - you can reconfigure the RAID to add more disks by going to the same area within Array Manager that the poster above mentions but right-click on Virtual Disk and you should see a Reconfigure... option there. Within that it will show any disks that can be added to the RAID (install them first).

You don't need to shutdown the server befhorehand as the disks are hot-swappable.

Once the RAID5 set rebuilds (you won't lose data) then I'd convert the disk to a dynamic disk then right click the volume you want to expand and select Expand Volume (or something similar) - this part is within the Disk View tab in Array Manager. Again this won't need a reboot.

I think there's a bug in Array Manager when you reconfigure the RAID - when I did it it stuck as state rebuilding but there was a lot of disk activity. I left it overnight and next morning it was still status rebuilding but the disk activity had stopped so I rebooted the server and the status change to normal.

 

[mmasahd]

Thanks for the input. My problem there is that most all of the RMB options on the objects are greyed out. Also, even with them greyed out, the option to "prepare to remove" isn't even there as an option. There isn't even anything close to that. Could it be installed incorrectly?

 

[ABOzIT]

* Have you installed the letst version of Array Manager?
* Are you logged on to the server as an administrator?

This is all I can think of ....sorry!

 

[MSClusterGuy]

Make sure your firmware for the PERC controller, and storage array are current(Internal system firmware if no external storage cabinet is used)
with the correct firmware, and you logged on as the local administrator, all options should be available.

** Note, the only logical drive that can be expanded on a PERC controller with a single RAID 5 stripe set is the last volume (logical drive) created.