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| Thread ID: 109566 | 2010-05-13 08:23:00 | RAID 1 - booting from either drive | WarNox (8772) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 884513 | 2010-05-13 08:23:00 | Hey! I've got a RAID 1 (mirror) setup in a server, just doing some testing at the moment. From my understanding the server should boot if either drive fails/is pulled out. These are hot plug-able 80 pin SCSI drives. Slot 0 - 72gb HP drive (sounds normal) Slot 1 - 72gb HP drive (makes weird whistling sound) If I unplug Slot 1 the server will not boot into windows, if I unplug Slot 0 it boots fine and rebuilds the drive. Basically the server will not boot if only the normal sounding drive (slot 0) is left plugged in. When I had the setup in RAID 0 earlier on, using the drive which is currently in Slot 0 (normal sounding) it worked fine. I've run multiple disk diagnostic tools and both drives show to be fine. A: Should I be worried about the whistling one? B: Why will the other drive not boot on its own? The server is a Dell 2850. Thanks for any help :) |
WarNox (8772) | ||
| 884514 | 2010-05-13 21:14:00 | What RAID controller are you using? I'd be worried about a whistling drive. | inphinity (7274) | ||
| 884515 | 2010-05-13 22:11:00 | Sounds like you have a problem then...Is this a production server? I would be doing a P2V conversion to a temporary host and then looking at replacement drives. Raid 1 is indeed fault tolerance and the system should boot without either drive. I imagine the Raid controller is bleating when 1 of the drives is missing and that make account for the non-boot, however doesn't explain the booting when the other drive is removed. SCSI drives can whistle a little (10k\15k is fast), your worry should be in relation to the volume! The only thing I can think of is the slot 0 drive has failed already with the whistling drive on its way out also... As stated, I would be virtualising now as a backup and getting replacement drives if it is a production unit..... |
SolMiester (139) | ||
| 884516 | 2010-05-13 23:08:00 | Hmm I read that around the wrong way and thought it only booted if Slot0 is in . If Slot1 is making a noise, and Slot0 isn't, is the drive in Slot0 spinning up at all? You did mention having run diagnostics on both drives . What does the status of the array show as with only the drive in Slot0 installed? Did you run the diagnostics with the drives in the server itself or did you move them elsewhere for testing? Also, is the issue linked to which drive bay the drive is in, or the drive itself? i . e . does it boot with *either* drive on its own, as long as its in Slot1, or will one of the drives boot in either bay and the other drive in neither . What if you wipe the drive that it won't boot from, and allow the array to rebuild? As Sol said, make sure you have a backup, and look at options to move this servers workload to another machine temporarily until this issue is solved . It looks initially like a drive fault, but it may also be a controller fault . |
inphinity (7274) | ||
| 884517 | 2010-05-14 01:14:00 | I will try swapping the drives around tonight. When both drives are plugged in the array shows up fine in OpenManage (by Dell) and both drives rebuild fine. These are 10k drives, both spin but one makes a bit of a whistling sound. Its a test environment so don't need to back stuff up :) Will post back after I've done some testing tonight. I could do a bit more remotely but for some reason DRAC isn't working remotely, it won't display the console screen. |
WarNox (8772) | ||
| 884518 | 2010-05-14 03:56:00 | Is it using an onboard RAID controller, or a 3rd party one (i.e. ServeRAID)? | nofam (9009) | ||
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