Serveraid 3h failed...can 4L directly swap in?

[bmcgrathPIX]

I have an IBM 5600, and the serveraid 3h controller took a poo...No communications to it. I have a feeling the Disks are OK, though. I have a Serveraid 4L sitting around that I know works...what will happen if I put the 4L in and boot it? Will the new card pull the config from the drives (RAID 5 w/ 2 hot spares, 6 disks total) Will the drives data be destroyed? Is there any way to preserve the data?

Thanks!

 

[scsiraid]

3H and 4L use different drivers so from an OS perspective they arent drop in replacements. However... the data is safe. The 3H will recognize the config information on the drives and import them. You will get an 'accept the configuratin change' message from BIOS when it boots up.

 

[bmcgrathPIX]

Thanks for the info. I actually figured this one out...

I finally found a refurb 3H, swapped it in, downloaded the config from the drives to the card, and it wouldnt boot. I finally figured out that you have to force a downgrade to the previous cards firmware version, by hitting CNTRL-F after botting to the IBM floppy firmware update utility. (windows sees a different driver for a different version if they dont match)

it seems as long as the firmware is the same...and the card will work in the server, you should be set. I hope this info helps out someone out there!

Thanks!