AU server loses drive in RAID array

Bloody Jack Kidd · April 12, 2011, 08:34:06 PM

yep - lost one of the drives just a short while ago - server performance may be slightly degraded and RAID protection is no longer in effect. Until I can get another drive into that server, it will be at an increased risk for an outage.

Mark · April 13, 2011, 09:08:23 AM

Keep up the good work!

I recently had a brand new Western Digital drive throwing SMART errors in a Synology NAS. Love the 3 year warranty! WD shipped me a new one fast, and the array rebuilt nice and quickly, without issue.

Bloody Jack Kidd · April 13, 2011, 09:15:24 AM

Have to find out if the replacement will be through CDW or HP.

Mark · April 13, 2011, 09:17:04 AM

Well, hopefully it all goes smoothly and quickly. My WD drives were bare drives purchased from NewEgg and I wasn't even paying attention to warranty when I bought them, so I considered myself lucky!

Jeff Golas · April 13, 2011, 09:52:56 AM

The best is the very first time you swap out a hot-swappable raid drive...slide the new one in...starts flickering....Sooo....thats..it? Like...what else do I do...anything? Really??

Jeff

Bloody Jack Kidd · April 13, 2011, 09:59:44 AM

I know the drives are accessible from the front of the chassis - but I can't remember if that server had a hot-swap backplane. I need to find my docs.

Mark · April 13, 2011, 10:00:57 AM

Quote from: Rick Chisholm on April 13, 2011, 09:59:44 AM
I know the drives are accessible from the front of the chassis - but I can't remember if that server had a hot-swap backplane. I need to find my docs.

I don't know if they are, but I think that ALL backplanes should be hot-swappable today.

Jeff Golas · April 13, 2011, 03:59:53 PM

What Mark said...if its in the past couple years...most likely hot swappable. SATA, SAS, and SCA SCSI (they kinda look like centronics) connectors are designed to be hot swappable from the get go. IDE is one that is uhh, not really. SATA may be hit or miss depending on how cheap the bay is, but I've used $20 bays and was successful in swapping drives.

God I'm gonna miss all this fun lingo when the CLOUD takes over our lives...

Bloody Jack Kidd · April 13, 2011, 04:08:23 PM

managed to submit a service request to HP - will see how fast this gets dealt with.

Bloody Jack Kidd · April 17, 2011, 02:00:44 PM

Well - that was less than fun... spent the weekend driving 45mins each way to the data center and back trying to get things running. Somehow in the process, the filesystem got b0rked which threw the server into single-user mode which in turn cut off all comms. If I only had remote console access (eh, Mark). So today it was just a matter of running fsck (unix equiv. of chkdisk) and bringing the server back up, again.

Of course, the database was also damaged from all this - had to repair that. It appears to have worked, things look good but this time no celebrations, totally jinxed myself with that once already. I'll wait a week before I claim any sort of victory.

Welcome back everyone - sorry for the extended outage.

Jeff Zylstra · April 18, 2011, 08:50:57 AM

No problems. And thank you for everything that you do Rick!

+1

Bloody Jack Kidd · April 18, 2011, 08:58:06 AM

I should say kudos to HP for their fast service as well - they overnight'd me that drive. Also a big thanks to Charles at the data center who met me onsite multiple times over the weekend - very accommodating.

Jan Regnier · April 18, 2011, 07:45:08 PM

Quote from: Rick Chisholm on April 18, 2011, 08:58:06 AM
I should say kudos to HP for their fast service as well - they overnight'd me that drive. Also a big thanks to Charles at the data center who met me onsite multiple times over the weekend - very accommodating.

It's good to know there are still businesses out there that value customers and provide good service as well as products. Good Job, Rick...sorry your week end sucked...

Mark · April 19, 2011, 11:16:50 AM

Quote from: Rick Chisholm on April 18, 2011, 08:58:06 AM
I should say kudos to HP for their fast service as well - they overnight'd me that drive. Also a big thanks to Charles at the data center who met me onsite multiple times over the weekend - very accommodating.

Awesome. Remote access cards should be standard in servers these days! I even have the Dell Enterprise RDRAC in my ESX servers. Don't know how often I'll ever need to go to the console on one of those, but if I do I have no worries!

Bob · April 19, 2011, 11:50:08 AM

We've been using DRAC cards for the last 4 years or so.. Great product and should be standard in every server!

Bloody Jack Kidd · April 19, 2011, 12:00:44 PM

I think most servers come with basic OOB mgmt - sometimes shared on NIC 1. The most advanced options are often dedicated iLO or iDRAC port. My server has the basic iLO, which may not have a virtual console... and I'd need another IP to access that. Not a huge expense, but definitely additional cost.

I'm researching whether or not the virtual console exists - if so, I might look into getting it connected.

Jeff Golas · April 19, 2011, 12:11:11 PM

Curious about this too but no time right now to play with it.

Jeff