Roll back scenario

[Mailadmin]

Hi,

Now that HP and Compaq merged our company was forced to switch from HP NetServers to the Compaq ProLiant server line.

When we got our first Compaq ProLiant DL380G2 server it came with a Compaq smartarray 5302 SCSI RAID controller as the replacement for the HP NetRAID 2M controllers.

We tested this new SCSI RAID card and found that it was slightly different from the HP NetRAID card. In fact it was totally different. We were astounded by the ammount of available options on this RAID card!!

Probably Compaq wants to make it possible for even housewifes (no offense) to create RAID volumes because the number of options is... well.... about zero.

Because the Compaq RAID card lacks some vital configuration possibilities we ended up with the following problem.

As systemadmins we don't 'trust' all those patches we have to enroll on our systems so before we roll-out such a patch on a system we always removed one of the mirrored (RAID 1) systemdisks of that specific server. After the patch was succesfully installed we reinstalled the removed disk and rebuilded it. If the patch was unsuccesfully installed we removed the systemdisk and inserted the earlier removed systemdisk, thus we had the original configuration back in no time.

For this last action to work, you have to manually bring the removed physical disk on-line in the NetRAID BIOS because the NetRAID BIOS doen't automaticly see that the reinserted disk can be used for the RAID configuration kept in NVRAM. After bringing the disk on-line the systems boots and you have your original systemdisk back.

This ain't possible with the Compaq smartarray RAID controller because it doensn't have the options available to manually bring physical disks on-line. The Compaq RAID controller is unable to boot from the removed disk (after reinstalling it into the original slot).

Question: Can anyone tell me how I can create a simmilar quick roll-back scenario on the Compaq RAID controller as I used on the HP NetRAID controller?

Thanks in advance....

 

[dieselfreak]

Ive doe this in the past;

Windows2000
5302 controller
2 x 9Gb disks in mirror

1) PULL OUT 1 member of mirrorset
2) Make changes to OS/app etc etc
3) shutdown/restart box
4) controller warns of missing disk press F1 to continue
5) If OS blue screens or whatever and u want to roll-back

1) Shutdown box
2) re-insert the removed member of the mirrorset
3) remove the drive with the suspect OS installation
4) power on server
5) Controller complains bla bla
6) press F2 to enter interim recovery mode
7) OS boots with previous configuration

Cheers

 

[connollyg]

What kind of options do you think you need on a RAID controller that the SmartArray cant do?

G