Octel 250 - RAID 1 disk failure - need to replace failed drive

[Dave Corey]

Hello,
I am looking for some information / guidance on replacing a failed hard drive. Our Octel 250 unit has 4 drives, 2 for system and 2 for mailboxes. One of the system drives has failed, 01, and I am in need of replacing it. Under the option 12, it says I have 4 disks installed with 3 running. I would like to know if there is any procedure that needs to be performed prior to shutting the system down, pulling the card, installing the new one and starting the system back up? Does the RAID set automatically rebuild itself much like a server or is there a command that needs to be executed for the rebuild.

If there are any commands to rebuild, remove, install or mount, from what menu do I need to go in do to this? The system obviously is no longer under any type of support, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[kxboy]

I'm guessing you don't have a service manual. You can get it here.

http://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/100007420

The steps in general.

1. Shut down the system
2. Insert a new drive in an empty slot. For you this is probably slot 5.
3. Boot the system into the disk utilities menu.
4. Using the disk utilities menu, copy the system software to the new drive in slot 5.
5. Shut down the system.
6. Remove the bad drive from slot 1 and move the replacement drive from slot 5 to slot 1.
7. Boot the system into the disk utilities menu, and use the drive replacement options to tell the system you have a new drive in slot 1. The utility will update all the tables/records as needed and then runs a verification.
8. Reboot the system and put it back in service.

 

[Dave Corey]

Thank you for the info. This will help a lot! I downloaded the service manual and saw how to get into the Menu 20 utilities when booting up. In reading thru the steps that you provided in regards to inserting and removing drives (i.e. steps 2 and 5), do I have to use the de-install drive utility and the install drive utility or do I just follow your steps above? Also, on the copying of the software, would I be using the copy software utility or copy phrases or copy software & phrases?

I did see another section in the manual that mentions making the drive redundant. Seeing that the system is setup that way, I am assuming I would have to go thru this procedure as well.

Thank you again for the help!

 

[kxboy]

No, just follow the directions in the manual, Repair and Replacement chapter, replace system drive in multiple drive server section. You will not have to do any of those other steps.

 

[Dave Corey]

Okay, so now I have a problem. I followed the manual to get into menu 20 offline since none of the options appeared when the system was up and running. I did a shutdown with dump and upon reboot when the system asked for BOOT, I hit control d then U and it said invalid command. My only choices are
B Boot the System
Control DB Boot the system (clear autoboot), set SRAM=0xff)
Control DD Run Diagnostics Interactively

If I try to boot the system, it says that it cant due to errors with the drive. So, basically now the voicemail system is down.

 

[Dave Corey]

I have the system back up and running for the moment.

I went into the Diagnostics Interactively menu and turned off any system checks for errors so the system did not stop booting due to the disk failure. I still have no way of getting to any of the menus they describe in the manual as far as garbage collection or drive replacement utilities.

 

[kxboy]

You need to have the service bit enable to get to the disk replacement menu, that is step 1-a in the instructions. However, I think you can also get to that menu if you connect to the modem port or if you have a modem connected, just dial into that and see if you can access the menu.

If you can't get the modem port to work, you can also turn on the eng bit, as the disk replacement menu is also enabled when the eng bit is turned on. Search this forum for "eng bit", as there was a post a while back on how to turn it on.

 

[Dave Corey]

Okay, since Im not entirely familiar with these procedures, when you say about connecting to the modem (which is installed and connected to the system) are you talking about literally dialing up with a laptop and connected to it? If so, I would assume you are using hyperterm to do this. What are the settings? This modem that is connected to the system is a 14.4k

 

[Dave Corey]

Well, I have successfully replaced the drive. I searched regarding modem connections and found that you needed a wyse50 emulation so I found a version of ZOC7 which had a wyse 60 emulation. I dialed into the modem and followed the procedures that you mentioned above. All went very smooth.

Thank you again for all your help!

One quick question regarding drives. Can the hard drive be replaced on the card and if so, can it be with any 2gb scsi drive? Since the system mirrors itself, I wouldn't think it would need any specific software on it from Nortel if the system if going to over-write it in a mirrored system.

 

[KenMeans]

You can't replace the drive on the board You will just make a nice boat anchor

Ken Means

http://www.tel-is.com

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)