Minimise downtime to rebuild disk

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E3xtc

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#75594 20-Jan-2011 11:11

Hi all,

Just wanting to get some advice from people here; we have a server that currently has a failing SCSI drive in it.
The SCSI drive is partitioned into 2 logical drives (system and programs)
It has no RAID configuration; nor does it have the capability to have a RAID controller inserted.
There is also no capacity to allow an additional drive to be put into the box.

What are peoples recommendations on the best and most cost effective way to replace that failing SCSI drive with a new one whilst minimising the downtime of the server?

I know there are applications out there that might assist in this process; but keen to hear peoples thoughts.

Cheers
Troy

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#429168 20-Jan-2011 13:14

I would suggest forgetting about minimising downtime. Bit of a false consideration when leaving the failing disk may well result in all data on the disk being lost and a much more extended downtime.

If it were me I would have already shut down the server and then worry about how to migrate the data over. As for software tools I still find ghost to be one of the best options out there. That is providing it can see the disk but if you do not have RAID then that should not be an issue.

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amanzi

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#429187 20-Jan-2011 13:58

Depending on your environment you may be able to virtualise the server through a P2V process. Then shut the physical server down and bring up the virtual instance. Once you're done fixing/replacing the physical server, clone the virtual server back onto the physical box.

magu

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#429204 20-Jan-2011 14:28

amanzi: Depending on your environment you may be able to virtualise the server through a P2V process. Then shut the physical server down and bring up the virtual instance. Once you're done fixing/replacing the physical server, clone the virtual server back onto the physical box.

+1 for this procedure. Much safer, as you can have all the time in the world to fix the physical box while the virtual one is turned on.

Of course, it requires you to have a hypervisor running somewhere.

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E3xtc

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#429207 20-Jan-2011 14:29

yeah while we have a Virtual environment; we don't have a nice way to P2V devices. At this stage I am looking at cloning the failing disk onto a new one...just need to find the best (free) software to do it :)

Thanks for the ideas/thoughts guys!
Cheers
Troy

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#429210 20-Jan-2011 14:32

What operating system is on the server? If it's Windows 2003 or higher there's a free tool from Microsoft that can do it, called something like Disk2VHD.exe

E3xtc

773 posts

Ultimate Geek

#429225 20-Jan-2011 15:18

Hmm I might look that up for future reference; however the location of this server in relation to our network setup and the virualised environment just means that it isn't an option at this point :(

Ragnor

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#429262 20-Jan-2011 17:12

Seen this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_disk_cloning_software

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lchiu7

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#429529 21-Jan-2011 14:03

E3xtc: yeah while we have a Virtual environment; we don't have a nice way to P2V devices. At this stage I am looking at cloning the failing disk onto a new one...just need to find the best (free) software to do it :)

Thanks for the ideas/thoughts guys!
Cheers
Troy

Actually I had to do this recently myself. This was not a server but a HP workstation (XW6200) with SCSI drives running Windows Server 2008. The drive itself wasn't bad - I just wanted to upgrade it.

I did the following.

Backed up the drive using http://www.todo-backup.com/ This is free software. I backed up to a USB drive.

Removed the old drive, put the new one and booted from a CDROM that contained the Easeus restore software.

Restored the image to the new drive.

Rebooted and all was fine.

Took about 2 hours in total, mainly because the USB drive was not that fast (I was backing up about 50G). A faster USB drive might reduce the time taken.

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E3xtc

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#429553 21-Jan-2011 15:14

Thanks everyone for the responses; I think I have a fairly solid idea of how to attack this. :)

Cheers

michaelmurfy

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#429565 21-Jan-2011 16:40

The Linux "DD" command might be of help here ;)

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#429639 21-Jan-2011 20:03

if you're thinking about adding a SAN/NAS to the mix then this would be a good time to do it. if you deployed a box that does iSCSI then you would create a new LUN on the SAN/NAS box and connect to it on your server. The LUN would then appear as a normal disk to the OS.

iSCSI runs accross a standard TCP/IP network, so you can have the storage seperated from your server as long as your network is fast enough.

You can build your own SAN/NAS box with open source software and a server with a raid controller and a bunch of disks, or you can pick up a commercial box from HP, IBM, NetApp, EMC etc.

One plus about having the SAN/NAS box is that you can deploy a big raidset with lots of spindles and redundancy and save money by not having to drop raid cards and spindles into each of your servers. If you're doing virtualisation then you get the added bonus of being able to do live migration without having to replcate the storage (virtual hard disks) too.

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