Urgent: Replacing Failed RAID card

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Zeon

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#127101 30-Jul-2013 08:44

Hey guys,
I have a failed RAID card (LSI 9266-4i) with about 30 drives in various arrays. It doesn't show up in BIOS as a boot option nor does its own BIOS show when the server boots. I have a spare in my backup SAN but I'm worried that taking that will potentially mean I lose my backups! Anyone had experienced with this situation and importing drive arrays? Both cards are identical.

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#868306 30-Jul-2013 08:45

First thoughts: Ring the vendor. Bugger the cost.

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Inphinity

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#868310 30-Jul-2013 08:50

I presume the one in your backup SAN is actually in use, and is used for your backups? If so, I would not use it for this - doing so would put the integrity of your backups at risk as well as your primary SAN (unless of course you have an additional tier of backups you can use if the backup SAN array died during this too). That controller isn't that old, so you should be able to get hold of another identical. I haven't done an array config import with that controller, so can't really comment on how well it handles it, sorry. But just don't put your backups at risk, as you could potentially lose both data sets...

rhysb

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#868322 30-Jul-2013 09:25

I've had to import foreign configs with other LSI cards and it works fine. It gives you an option to import the foreign config and verify it's setup when it detects the drives.

ubergeeknz

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Vocus

#868355 30-Jul-2013 10:04

It should work OK. Just be very cautious.

Zeon

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#868368 30-Jul-2013 10:48

Thanks for the advice guys. Didn't have time to muck around with the vendors, saw some posts that people had imported fine and spoke with a colleague who had done it with LSI cards. Tried it and it worked great, picked up all the drive groups, spans, even cachecade. Now time to get a replacement card for the backup SAN!

Definitely felt risky putting backups at risk but gotta take a chance sometimes

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#868377 30-Jul-2013 11:11

heh, it might be time to consider an upgrade to a ZFS array.

Mark

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#869194 31-Jul-2013 11:45

1080p: heh, it might be time to consider an upgrade to a ZFS array.

He'd want a proper storage array surely ? ;-)

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gjm

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#869261 31-Jul-2013 13:04

Zeon: Thanks for the advice guys. Didn't have time to muck around with the vendors, saw some posts that people had imported fine and spoke with a colleague who had done it with LSI cards. Tried it and it worked great, picked up all the drive groups, spans, even cachecade. Now time to get a replacement card for the backup SAN!

Definitely felt risky putting backups at risk but gotta take a chance sometimes

Well done...makes me nervous just reading that though. Yeah get that replacement card...you've tee'd the ball up for Murphy nicely and he really likes to hit it hard.

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Zeon

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#875476 11-Aug-2013 20:27

OMG just had ANOTHER fail. I managed to borrow 2 while the others are shipped so one replaced this one and the other I will put into the backup SAN. Seriously has anyone seen a failure rate like this?

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gjm

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#875488 11-Aug-2013 21:16

wow....thats not what you need on a Sunday night. Could be a coincidence but one more any time soon and I'd start being seriously worried

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Dynamic

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#875494 11-Aug-2013 21:27

Firmware issue perhaps? Are the cards running the latest?

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insane

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#875505 11-Aug-2013 21:44

Zeon: OMG just had ANOTHER fail. I managed to borrow 2 while the others are shipped so one replaced this one and the other I will put into the backup SAN. Seriously has anyone seen a failure rate like this?

Power issues? Ticking timebomb in controller firmware?

Still a firm believer of your whitebox/supermicro servers ? :p

Zeon

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#875534 11-Aug-2013 22:59

Possibly firmware related.. perhaps there is a bug? I have 2 others with the same firmware which are running OK though. very odd.. I don't think I will touch any of the other firmwares until I get the replacement cards.

Haha well I can't say it was a Supermicro component which failed. The card runs a SAS2208 controller which I underrstand the Dell PERC series and IBM cards run, but perhaps they have different firmware. This one was kind of different, the card would still initialize without any drives attached in a PC but as soon as drives were attached would get a weird message about not being able to sync PDs/VD's (physical drives and virtual drives). It's plugged into a LSI SAS expander. The other card simply was nothing, nothing during boot, no light on the card or anything so this doesn't seem as dire.

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#881896 20-Aug-2013 22:56

Mark:
1080p: heh, it might be time to consider an upgrade to a ZFS array.

He'd want a proper storage array surely ? ;-)

:P

There is nothing more proper than ZFS. /preach

Mark

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#881991 21-Aug-2013 09:27

1080p:
Mark:
1080p: heh, it might be time to consider an upgrade to a ZFS array.

He'd want a proper storage array surely ? ;-)

:P

There is nothing more proper than ZFS. /preach

hehehe .. well I do work for a competing company so I have to say such things ;-) That said I do like the concept of ZFS, bit-rot detection, built in compression/de-dupe and all the other goodies, but I just wish they'd nail it down and not have all the different pool and filesystem versions which may or may not be portable!

Currently I'm trying to source some Flash DOMs so I can rebuild my Thecus NAS with FreeBSD and make use of ZFS, Thecus did have ZFS, but it was via FUSE module and it SSSSUUUUCCCCKKKKKEEEDDDDDDD!!!!! :-(

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