RAID Question

S

SL83

Veteran XV
I have 2 HP Proliant DL380 G6s with 8 SAS drives each. They have an embedded HP Smart Array P410i RAID controller with 512 MB of RAM.

Server 1 - is running RAID 5 with 7 physical drives (1 logical) and 1 hot swappable spare.

Server 2 - is running RAID 50 with 6 physical drives (2 logical) and 2 hot swappable spares.


For whatever reason, Server 2 is "going away" but I can keep the 8 SAS drives.

Can I swap the drives from Server 2 into Server 1 and back and forth without any problems?

Discuss.
 
As long as the drives are all the same size, you should be OK for the most part. You have to make sure a drive fails or you fail the drive before popping a new one in. You also want to make sure the new one is cleared out with no data or else that can cause some issues when the array is building. If you want to add more drives to extend the storage, that you cannot do, but you could create another container and make another logical drive.
 
What I'm basically asking is when I don't need Server 1 - can I pop in Server 2's drives and run server 2 off of Server 1's chassis.
 
Not familiar with HP's embedded controllers, but my gut says "no." The drive array is defined within the controller, so if you move drives from server 2 to server 1, you'd have to re-initialize the array (and lose your data).

If you were able to move the controller and the drives (or if the controller has the ability to export/import a saved config), then yes.
 
[MoM] Gort said:
Not familiar with HP's embedded controllers, but my gut says "no." The drive array is defined within the controller, so if you move drives from server 2 to server 1, you'd have to re-initialize the array (and lose your data).

If you were able to move the controller and the drives (or if the controller has the ability to export/import a saved config), then yes.
Click to expand...

Yeah - this is what I thought as well.

The reason this came up is because 3 different programs want to utilize the same server but each have their own set of drives. They don't want to spend the money on a server - so if they can just buy the drives - they save money. :picard:

So I tried it on a server I was building.

It worked just fine. Completely unexpected on my part. Re-ordered the drives, swapped server 1 and server 2 - and the controller auto-detected everything and it worked seamlessly. Absolutely no configuration changes had to be made manually.

:shrug:
 
basically all you need is about 10-20% healers, between 1-3 tanks and the rest dps. melee is rly broken right now so i'd suggest lots of warriors/rogues/pallys unless its a non melee fight
 
SL83 said:
I have 2 HP Proliant DL380 G6s with 8 SAS drives each. They have an embedded HP Smart Array P410i RAID controller with 512 MB of RAM.

Server 1 - is running RAID 5 with 7 physical drives (1 logical) and 1 hot swappable spare.

Server 2 - is running RAID 50 with 6 physical drives (2 logical) and 2 hot swappable spares.


For whatever reason, Server 2 is "going away" but I can keep the 8 SAS drives.

Can I swap the drives from Server 2 into Server 1 and back and forth without any problems?

Discuss.
Click to expand...
Delete the array on the server that is going away, and there will be no problems using the drives as spares
 
[MoM] Gort said:
Not familiar with HP's embedded controllers, but my gut says "no." The drive array is defined within the controller, so if you move drives from server 2 to server 1, you'd have to re-initialize the array (and lose your data).

If you were able to move the controller and the drives (or if the controller has the ability to export/import a saved config), then yes.
Click to expand...

Incorrect. HP drive array configs are NOT on the controllers. That information is stored on the drives.

He can literally move all of the drives, in the correct order, from one server to the other with no ill effects and the array will be preserved.

Edit: Even if this was an IBM where configuration metadata is stored on the controller, you can still move all of the drives with no bad effects. It would involve making sure no drives are in the server, clearing the controller config, powering down, putting all drives back into the server, and then copying the config from the drives to the controller.

For fuck's sake, if you couldn't do any of this, a failed array controller would be the end of the server and all data.
 
Last edited:
Vlasic said:
Incorrect. HP drive array configs are NOT on the controllers. That information is stored on the drives.

He can literally move all of the drives, in the correct order, from one server to the other with no ill effects and the array will be preserved.
Click to expand...

I didn't even need to do it in the correct order. I didn't need to deploy the server anytime soon - so I decided to fuck with the RAID for shits and giggles.

I swapped all the drives from bay 1-8 into random slots, and they showed up just fine with no issues.

I thought that was pretty cool :)
 
SL83 said:
I didn't even need to do it in the correct order. I didn't need to deploy the server anytime soon - so I decided to fuck with the RAID for shits and giggles.

I swapped all the drives from bay 1-8 into random slots, and they showed up just fine with no issues.

I thought that was pretty cool :)
Click to expand...

Aye, the SAS and late SCSI controllers don't care about order. Don't try this on something like a 5i controller though!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top