Sorry for the length here, but I know you need details to help...
I'm somewhat new to the whole IBM Server thang, but I'm jumping in with both feet and have come up with a possible problem, but no solution yet. Maybe I'm missing something, but I haven't found a way around this scenario without losing data, which is exactly what we don't want to do.
Please read this over and comment, if possible.
Let's say I'm using a ServeRAID-4H (2 internal, 4 external). I'm using channel 2 internal to control the box, which leaves channel 2 external unavailable. Let's also say I'm then using channel 1 external to control half of a EXP300 and channel 3 external to control the other half of the EXP300. That obviously leaves channel 4 external available.
There are 6 HDD's in the EXP300, 3 connected to the 4H channel 1 and 3 to channel 3. All 6 drives are part of a single 5E array, one logical drive. Data is stored on this logical drive. OS is Win2K, ServeRAID 6.11.
Therefore, the array will show 1 logical drive with 3 physical drives on channel 1 and 3 physical drives on channel 3.
If channel 1 of the 4H was to take a dump (theoretically), the 3 drives on that channel would become defunct, correct?
Also, both the logical drive and the array would be inaccessible.
Since part of the definition of the array is 3 physical drives from channel 1, and channel 1 is dead in the water, how would the data be recovered?
Is there a way to switch over to the available, functioning channel 4 and change the array definition, and still be able to recover the data?
I purposely caused a scenario similar to this, and was unable to recover (experimental, so not a problem).
What worries me is, why couldn't I recover?
I'm wondering what I'm missing?
It seems to me that there must be some way to recover the data in a scenario such as this, but it seems that the only way to rearrange the configuration was to wipe it out first, and recreate the array. I'm quite sure the data was still on the drives, but I couldn't access it.
Any ideas on where to look for info on something like this?
Thanks for taking the time to read my blathering...
I'm somewhat new to the whole IBM Server thang, but I'm jumping in with both feet and have come up with a possible problem, but no solution yet. Maybe I'm missing something, but I haven't found a way around this scenario without losing data, which is exactly what we don't want to do.
Please read this over and comment, if possible.
Let's say I'm using a ServeRAID-4H (2 internal, 4 external). I'm using channel 2 internal to control the box, which leaves channel 2 external unavailable. Let's also say I'm then using channel 1 external to control half of a EXP300 and channel 3 external to control the other half of the EXP300. That obviously leaves channel 4 external available.
There are 6 HDD's in the EXP300, 3 connected to the 4H channel 1 and 3 to channel 3. All 6 drives are part of a single 5E array, one logical drive. Data is stored on this logical drive. OS is Win2K, ServeRAID 6.11.
Therefore, the array will show 1 logical drive with 3 physical drives on channel 1 and 3 physical drives on channel 3.
If channel 1 of the 4H was to take a dump (theoretically), the 3 drives on that channel would become defunct, correct?
Also, both the logical drive and the array would be inaccessible.
Since part of the definition of the array is 3 physical drives from channel 1, and channel 1 is dead in the water, how would the data be recovered?
Is there a way to switch over to the available, functioning channel 4 and change the array definition, and still be able to recover the data?
I purposely caused a scenario similar to this, and was unable to recover (experimental, so not a problem).
What worries me is, why couldn't I recover?
I'm wondering what I'm missing?
It seems to me that there must be some way to recover the data in a scenario such as this, but it seems that the only way to rearrange the configuration was to wipe it out first, and recreate the array. I'm quite sure the data was still on the drives, but I couldn't access it.
Any ideas on where to look for info on something like this?
Thanks for taking the time to read my blathering...