Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 11:13:37 -0700 From: "Alex Franks" <arfranks@gmail.com> To: "Alex Zbyslaw" <xfb52@dial.pipex.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Hot-Swapping hard drives on Dell PowerEdge 2850 running FBSD 5.5-PRE Message-ID: <2f488c030606231113i2b9b4bdcsa1b4192be54b9011@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <449BAE45.7030705@dial.pipex.com> References: <2f488c030606221106q4183de17gbff80d696f704505@mail.gmail.com> <449BAE45.7030705@dial.pipex.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 6/23/06, Alex Zbyslaw <xfb52@dial.pipex.com> wrote: > Alex Franks wrote: > > > Hello all, > > > > I'm getting ready to install 2 identical drives into the available > > drive bays in my 2850. However, it would be highly preferable that > > this machine NOT be shut down in order to install these drives. I know > > from looking at the docs that these drive bays are hot-swappable, but > > I'd like to know before I attempt this that someone else out there has > > successfully performed a hot-swap or hot-install of drives on a 2850 > > or comparable Dell PowerEdge running FreeBSD. > > RAID-1 I assume and PERC 4e/Di. Yes, did it when testing fresh > machines. The controller BIOS has a setting for how much resource to > allocate to the recovery of the inserted drive (0?-100%); the lower you > set it the slower it will recover the disk, but the higher you set it > the slower the machine will go. I think we went for 70% as the machine > never gets *that* heavy disk usage. > > If the machine isn't live yet, then just do a basic install from CD (<30 > mins) and then try the hotswap test. That way you can't lose any data > even if something goes wrong. > > My advice with these machines is never to swap any disk with the machine > off - the controller gets confused. Stick with hotswapping and it seems > fine. I think you can set up an auto-spare so that if a disk fails the > array is rebuilt automatically using the spare. > > Use sysutils/megarc for monitoring the RAID from BSD. > > --Alex > > > Thanks for the input, The drives hot-plugged just fine. The machine was live when I plugged the disks and still is right now. I'm trying to avoid another trip to the colo today to (safely) reboot by finding out if/where the drives are loaded at the hardware level and how I can go about mounting them to logical partitions. At this point, I'm not as concerned about getting the 2 drives into RAID1 since they're going to be used for backup purposes and will not be used in a high volume capacity (for now), and since this would almost certainly require a reboot. I *know* rebooting is preferable, but I'm experimenting here, and uptime is pretty important since the server is the main mysql box for a handful of websites. The controller is a Perc 4e/Di as assumed, and I'm still a little unsure as to whether the 2 drives that shipped with the machine are currently set up in a RAID array. The current filesystem is mounted on /dev/amrd0s1[a-f] and I would expect to find the new drives named similarly after using some useful utility that I'm unaware of. Any thoughts? Thanks again. Alex
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?2f488c030606231113i2b9b4bdcsa1b4192be54b9011>