X460 6i sata raid 5 question

[garyinspringhill]

I just setup a raid 5 using a 6i serveraid pci-x card with 3 1tb wd sata drives. All was perfect till one month after setup a drive fried luckily I had a new spare when plugged in the yellow rebuild light came on and after 2-3 days it was done and the yellow light went out for that drive. Now the other 2 drives activity (green) lights flash in sync about 8 times a second and have been for a week! Is this a normal part of the rebuild process and will eventually stop?
When the raid kernel loads it reports the raid as "OK" while it was rebuilding the bad drive it would report "REBUILDING". So the actual rebuild process did complete properly. If I do a reboot as soon as the raid kernel loads the other 2 drive activity lights start flashing again rapidly as explained.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[garyinspringhill]

I forgot to mention Ubuntu 10.04LTS

 

[goombawaho]

You should boot up using the serveRAID bootable CD and then you can check the status of the drives, the array and also update the firmware of the controller if needed. If you update the firwmware, you should update the driver for your O.S. as well each time.

http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?lndocid=MIGR-60624#DOCPRODUCTS

Fantastic that your 1TB drive lasted ONE WHOLE MONTH. Maybe a flood baby.

 

[garyinspringhill]

In an established raid level 5 if I disable "syncing" in the 6i controller using the boot time config will that damage my raid data in anyway?
By the way thanks for the reply....

 

[goombawaho]

It's been a while since I've been involved with the ServeRAID controllers, but I don't recall that term. Synchronization usually refers to checking the parity across all the drives so that the data is, in fact, good and protected. It can be scheduled or kicked off manually by a command. Rebuilding, which is what should have happened when you replaced the bad drive, should be a short term (up to a couple of days) event and one time only.

If it is repeatedly or continuously trying to synchronize without end, it's telling me that there is some problem or combination of problems between controller/firmware and drive/drive firmware.

You know there are DRIVE firmware updates as well separate from the controller firmware.

Could you just boot up to the CD and tell us what the status is of the array, the drives (online/offline)? And mention which exact model hard drives you have.

The reason I want you to boot up to the CD is that it will take the operating system out of the equation and you can see if it will finish synchronizing. Of course, this means down time. But you had better figure out what's going on as you may have unprotected data at this point.

 

[garyinspringhill]

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!
The firmware cd was a snap and yes the firmware was very old. Updated the firmware and upon rebooting found the new drive that was replaced and all is well. By the way I was referring to it as the 6i it was an 8i my bad...

Anyway did I say THANK YOU

 

[goombawaho]

Wow - that could have been a killer mistake (in some operating systems) if you used the 6i driver instead of the 8i, but that CD must have supported both. Or did you download a different CD??

Don't forget to upgrade your O.S. driver for the controller so there won't be a mismatch. Some of the systems I worked on would throw a warning out (pre-O.S. boot) that mentioned a driver/firmware mismatch.

 

[rclarke250]

6I is a scsi only raid adapter, and the 8I supports SATA, and SAS.

Go here for the latest software matrix, and to get the correct .iso image.

http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?lndocid=SERV-RAID

 

[goombawaho]

He must have already done that.

 

[garyinspringhill]

Yes I downloaded the 8i cdrom. The server has both 6i and 8i cards installed so it was an honest if not dumb mistake on my part. As far as the driver aacraid kernel module I'm just using the native Ubuntu one that comes with my kernel and closely watched to boot from 8i kernel loading to desktop and no complaints at all.
I just HATE flashing hardware firmware of any kind is usually don't unless it's needed and in this case thanks to this forums help I discovered it was!

Thanks Folks

 

[goombawaho]

Just so you know. I've seen IBM hard drive firmware updates that list the consequences of NOT updating as "premature drive failure".

So, yes, it's good to be careful and skeptical (if ain't broke, don't fix it or break it), but I tend to go with the firmware updates for my controllers and hard drives, especially from IBM. I've done quite a few of them and they seem to take care of themselves.

 

[garyinspringhill]

Well the 3 1tb Western Digital drives I'm using I'm sure are not supported by IBM. model #WD10TPVT. Should I look for firmware updates from western digital? Or not bother. The drive that did go bad was making a very bad buzzing noise and clicking loud (for a laptop drive). Sounded like a head came loose or something.

 

[goombawaho]

Buzzing/clicking - that's a sure bad sign!!!!

I would look to see if there are any known (bad) issues with your particular model and firmware version. Don't get too paranoid is the bottom line. I recall though that there was a large number of failures associated with a certain firmware of Seagate drives about a year ago and it was firmware related.

I was speaking more for server type drives that are included in the list of supported devices on those firmware update CDs. Then it's a no-brainer to update.