Various Raid Questions

[dumorian]

I am migrating to Compaq 3000 servers. Each system will have a main server and a backup server. The backup server will only store daily backups, while the main server will be serving the files.

The second purpose of the backup machines is to take the place of a main server should a system go down for some 'other' reason. My plan is to take the drives from the main server and place them in the backup server.

First Question: In one case, the two machine have smart 2h cards, one set to fault tolerant raid 5 with (5) 18.2 gig drives, one is a hot spare. I have the other machine set up with (4) 18.2 gig drives running fault tolerant raid 5. I assume I can take the (4) running drives from the main server and place them in the backup server with no problems? The Linux OS is fine with the swap.

Second Question: Do the onboard SCSI controllers support raid 5?

Third Question: Can I run a (4) 9.1 gig fault tolerant raid 5 on one machine and expect to be able to swap them out with (4) 18.2 gig fault tolerant raid 5 drives without data loss or user setup?

Fourth Question: To get around the Question 3, if that doesn't work. Could I expect to swap a drive set and along with its smart controller card (assuming both machine have the same controller card) without data loss?

Thanks!
John Hinton

 

[connollyg]

John,

Had trouble finding anything on this really old controller, but in the end all you have to do is go to

http://www.hp.com

and in the search box put "smart-2dh" and for me the 3rd entry is the manual for this controller.

i assumed you really meant the 2dh rather than a 2h controller

G