New logical drives

[fatdog302]

Running an IBM xseries 335 (only two HDD bays) i want to change over the 36 GB drives to 146 GB drives. I have downloaded the IBM serveraid manager bootdisk. I pulled out the old drives entered the new drives, switched the server on and it booted to the Serveraid manager program and the two disks show up with correct size but they are defunct. I dont know how to initialize them. I dont have much knowledge on these sorts of operations. Could someone please let me know where i am going wrong and point guide me in the right direction.

Thanks.

 

[scsiraid]

Try deleting the logical drive and then recreate it. I assume that this is the LSI IM solution and you dont have a 5i plugged in (I believe 5i was supported in x335). You can also go into the LSI BIOS and delete the mirror and recreate it. You dont have to use the bootable CD.

 

[fatdog302]

It is the LSI (1030), i should have mentioned that i have two IBM 335s and the one that i am doing this on isnt the one they are going to reside in, Server 1 - the one in which they are going to eventually reside is a critical server that needs to be kept up for as long as possible so i want to do as much of the prep work as possible on the server 2. Server 2s 36 GB drives will be used again after this operation, so if i go and do what you have suggested and delete the existing logical drive then my ability to just slip the old disks back in and restart the server will be effected???

 

[scsiraid]

What happens if you shut down the system with the 36's, remove them and put in the 146's and then reboot it without the ServeRAID Manager CD. Does the OS boot? The LSI solution doesnt use metadata and I believe it will accept the mirrored pair as long as it was shut down properly. The source of the 146's should also be shut down properly with the mirror completely sync'd.

 

[fatdog302]

The 146 drives are blank i want to build the raid set on them (do that in server 2) and then put them in server 1. So if i delete the logical drive in server 2 in order to build the 146s and then put the original 36s back in server 2 will it boot despite having deleted the original logical drive.

 

[scsiraid]

I believe the short answer to be yes.... You can always get the server back after turning off mirroring in LSI BIOS since there is not metadata involved. I would use the BIOS configurator rather than SRM. If you are seeing DDD in Server 2 then I suggest deleting the logical driver with SRM or (my preference) going into LSI bios and turn off mirroring. Install 1 of the 146's and boot and install your OS. Once you are done, you can shut down server 1, pull the 36's, reboot to the LSI BIOS... turn off mirroring, shut down, put in the 146 with the OS in first slot and the other 146 in the second slot, boot to LSI BIOS and turn on mirroring (set first drive to primary and other to secondary), reboot. You should now be up on the image on the 146. It will be resyncing and will take about a day to complete. Server will work during resync but slower.

 

[fatdog302]

Finally got around to doing this and it worked perfectly, it was a good strategy... Thanks very much.