Remove SCSI drive from DL380 while on?

I have RAID5+1 and the spare has just been activated. In slots 4 and 5 I
have a mirror and I want to break the mirror and use one of the drives as
the spare for the RAID5+1. That would work fine if I could reboot the
server but I cannot. Can I just pull the drive out of slot 5 while "hot" and
not have any problems?

Thanks!

Pulling 1 member of a mirror while the servers is online is HIGHLY
UNRELIABLE. Your chances of having a disk that you can boot to is extremely
low.

I need to do this all the time, and what we do is schedule a maintenance
window with the customer, power the box off, pop the drive, and power it
back on. This is VERY RELIABLE.

It simply must be done that way.

- LC

"just bob" kilbyfan@aoldotcom wrote in message
...
I have RAID5+1 and the spare has just been activated. In slots 4 and 5 I
have a mirror and I want to break the mirror and use one of the drives as
the spare for the RAID5+1. That would work fine if I could reboot the
server but I cannot. Can I just pull the drive out of slot 5 while "hot"
and not have any problems?

Thanks!

Thanks
"Nut Cracker" wrote in message
t...
Pulling 1 member of a mirror while the servers is online is HIGHLY
UNRELIABLE. Your chances of having a disk that you can boot to is
extremely low.

I need to do this all the time, and what we do is schedule a maintenance
window with the customer, power the box off, pop the drive, and power it
back on. This is VERY RELIABLE.

It simply must be done that way.

- LC

"just bob" kilbyfan@aoldotcom wrote in message
...
I have RAID5+1 and the spare has just been activated. In slots 4 and 5 I
have a mirror and I want to break the mirror and use one of the drives as
the spare for the RAID5+1. That would work fine if I could reboot the
server but I cannot. Can I just pull the drive out of slot 5 while "hot"
and not have any problems?

Thanks!

"Nut Cracker" wrote
Pulling 1 member of a mirror while the servers is online is HIGHLY
UNRELIABLE. Your chances of having a disk that you can boot to is
extremely low.

I need to do this all the time, and what we do is schedule a maintenance
window with the customer, power the box off, pop the drive, and power it
back on. This is VERY RELIABLE.

It simply must be done that way.

Indeed. You can hot-plug a drive, but you can't hot-unplug it.

"Jez T" wrote in message
...

"Nut Cracker" wrote
Pulling 1 member of a mirror while the servers is online is HIGHLY
UNRELIABLE. Your chances of having a disk that you can boot to is
extremely low.

I need to do this all the time, and what we do is schedule a maintenance
window with the customer, power the box off, pop the drive, and power it
back on. This is VERY RELIABLE.

It simply must be done that way.

Indeed. You can hot-plug a drive, but you can't hot-unplug it.


I hear you but I have pulled them hot, many times. I have about 10 bays of
10 or 14 drives a bay. If I hear a drive start whining, or getting noisy,
long before the drive is reported by the system as having problems, I'll
pull it out and pop in a new one. Never lost a thing. I do have them all
setup with a hot spare and immediately when I pull a drive I can see the hot
spare start rebuilding. It doesn't take long and it switches itself to the
replaced drive and then starts rebuilding it.

It may be a nono, but never a problem. I have also done that right on a
multiple drive server where a drive is getting noisy. They are also setup
with hot spare but no loss with replacing it that way either.

"Phil" wrote in message
...

"Jez T" wrote in message
...

"Nut Cracker" wrote
Pulling 1 member of a mirror while the servers is online is HIGHLY
UNRELIABLE. Your chances of having a disk that you can boot to is
extremely low.

I need to do this all the time, and what we do is schedule a
maintenance
window with the customer, power the box off, pop the drive, and power
it
back on. This is VERY RELIABLE.

It simply must be done that way.

Indeed. You can hot-plug a drive, but you can't hot-unplug it.


I hear you but I have pulled them hot, many times. I have about 10 bays of
10 or 14 drives a bay. If I hear a drive start whining, or getting noisy,
long before the drive is reported by the system as having problems, I'll
pull it out and pop in a new one. Never lost a thing. I do have them all
setup with a hot spare and immediately when I pull a drive I can see the
hot
spare start rebuilding. It doesn't take long and it switches itself to the
replaced drive and then starts rebuilding it.

It may be a nono, but never a problem. I have also done that right on a
multiple drive server where a drive is getting noisy. They are also setup
with hot spare but no loss with replacing it that way either.



I think you misusnderstand me ...

Hot Pops so that you can replace a noisy/failed/failing drive is totally
fine. However, if you want to hot pop a drive that is part of a mirror so
that you can use the poped disk to boot from in another machine .... that is
what I was strongly cautioning against.

Hopefully this is more clear.

- LC

"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote in message
...

"Phil" wrote in message
...

"Jez T" wrote in message
...

"Nut Cracker" wrote
Pulling 1 member of a mirror while the servers is online is HIGHLY
UNRELIABLE. Your chances of having a disk that you can boot to is
extremely low.

I need to do this all the time, and what we do is schedule a
maintenance
window with the customer, power the box off, pop the drive, and power
it
back on. This is VERY RELIABLE.

It simply must be done that way.

Indeed. You can hot-plug a drive, but you can't hot-unplug it.


I hear you but I have pulled them hot, many times. I have about 10 bays
of
10 or 14 drives a bay. If I hear a drive start whining, or getting noisy,
long before the drive is reported by the system as having problems, I'll
pull it out and pop in a new one. Never lost a thing. I do have them all
setup with a hot spare and immediately when I pull a drive I can see the
hot
spare start rebuilding. It doesn't take long and it switches itself to
the
replaced drive and then starts rebuilding it.

It may be a nono, but never a problem. I have also done that right on a
multiple drive server where a drive is getting noisy. They are also setup
with hot spare but no loss with replacing it that way either.



I think you misusnderstand me ...

Hot Pops so that you can replace a noisy/failed/failing drive is totally
fine. However, if you want to hot pop a drive that is part of a mirror so
that you can use the poped disk to boot from in another machine .... that
is what I was strongly cautioning against.

Hopefully this is more clear.

Actually, all the same server, I wanted to break the mirror in slot 4 and 5
and use the disk in slot 3 which is the hot spare port for the raid of slots
0, 1, and 2. However we decided to wait until the replacement drive arrived
the next morning.