RAID 5 Rebuild

[mauricemcse]

The diagnostic report for my five SCSI drives is that one is defunct[yellow light] and one is critical. I intend to replace the defunct drive. Will the critical drive affect a rebuild. Also, there is no indication of which drive is critical. How can this be determined?

 

[catorze]

Typically, in a RAID 5 configuration, you will receive two alerts - one for the disk failure, and another that the logical drive is in a critical state. This is normal and expected behavior. With a failed disk in the array, there is no additional redundancy and if another disk fails you will lose data. Once the failed disk is replaced and the rebuild completes, the logical drive will no longer be in a critical state.

 

[mauricemcse]

Thanks for the reply. I have replaced the drive with a new identical drive. The light is still yellow. Wanted to know if there is anything that should be done to a new drive out of the box to rebuild itself in the RAID 5 configuration. Continued advice sought.

 

[Davetoo]

What ServeRAID version are you running?

I'm Certifiable, not certified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

 

[mauricemcse]

To: Lander215

Much thanks for your efforts on my behalf. The IBM ServeRAID miniconfiguration and PCI info says: version 6.00.31. The RAID controller card is extremely old [3H] but it has been working well. I used a replacement drive out of the box. Continued guidance is truly appreciated.

 

[Davetoo]

Before you removed the defunct drive, did you choose the option in ServeRAID to replace the drive?

Early versions of ServeRAID made you do this. You might have to stick the old drive back in, tell ServeRAID you're going to replace the drive, then do the replacement.

I know with 6.1 and above you don't have to do this, you just remove the drive and put in the new one and ServeRAID will rebild the array automatically. With an older version, I had to put the old drive back in, tell it I was going to replace it, then actually do the replacment before it worked.

This was using a 3H controller.

I'm Certifiable, not certified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

 

[mauricemcse]

Greetings:

I've gone to ctrl I to search for a replace option/command. None was found. I've used three new replacement drives and they all go yellow. The documentation says that it could be the cable, backplane, etc. I'm willing to change the cable but what do I risk with playing with the backplane? What do I risk by going to ServeRAID 7? I await your learned reply.

 

[Davetoo]

If you're under warranty or a support contract with IBM, then contact them. You can pull your RAID log up and view it as well to see if it shows anything, but I had to send mine to IBM for them to dissect it to determine a backplane in one of my servers was bad.

I'm Certifiable, not certified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

 

[mauricemcse]

No... not under warranty but an interesting thing has happened. I placed one of the intended replacement drives back in the server. The light has been a solid green since last evening even though the ServeRAID says it is still defunct. I have installed the management process command line program and have read that one can command a rebuild. Any opinions?

 

[mauricemcse]

CASE CLOSED...


Was able to use ServeRAID 7 to synchronize three sets of [5 disk] RAID 5 Arrays. Thanks to all...