Archived from groups: comp.hardware,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware (
More info?)
On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 18:19:18 -0400, "Rita Ä Berkowitz"
<ritaberk20O4@aol.com> wrote:
>"Rick B." <wrickk@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:2c1819ac.0406090535.76ee2aab@posting.google.com...
>
>> Here's the problem, I have an IBM Netfinity 5100 with a ServerRaid 4x
>> Ultra 160. I originally built the server with three drives in a Raid
>> 5, everything was fine, no problems. Recently I purchased three
>> additional drives and fully populated the cage, the problem is when I
>> run either the Mini Config or the Server Raid GUI config it only
>> recognizes one of the new drives. Drives 1 (Bay #0), 2 (Bay #2) and 3
>> (Bay #3) are the original and work fine, drive 4 (Bay #4) shows
>> standby, drive 5 (Bay #8) is fine, and drive 6 (Bay #9) shows up as
>> disabled. I looked everywhere and can't find a way to put these drives
>> in "ready" mode. What the heck am I missing? Is there a way to
>> activate these drives without losing the data I have on my original
>> array? Help.
>>
>
>
>
>Rick, I'm not sure what RAID controller is being used in that machine.
I suspect He means the IBM ServeRAID 4Lx. It's no matter though,
AFAIK all the IBM ServeRAIDs use a common BIOS & configuration tool.
>would venture to say that you will have to do a complete backup, including
>system state, and reboot to get back into the RAID configuration. Once
>there, you will need to clear your old configuration and rebuild the array.
>Unfortunately, some of the low-mid class controllers won't let you increase
>array size on the fly.
Before doing anything so dramatic rechek termination and SCSI ID
conflicts and verify that the drives & cage are good using a different
controller. Also make sure you wipe clean the boot sector of the new
drives. I seem to remember once a loose molex conector and some MBR
info giving me similar confusion a long time ago.
yes you can add drives & volumes to a serveraid without having to
reinitialize pre-existing volumes, and you can perform hotswap,
failover, etc. It's not really such a low-end controller, just an
older one (whose software is still being developed). Software feature
wise the older Serveraids are barely distinguishable from the newest &
most expensive ones.
When you boot off the Serveraid support CD the new drives should be
recognized and you should be prompted to create a new volume. there
is an option to force discovery of new drives, but you shouldn't need
to do that. Remember the configuration software you use must match
the BIOS revision
Of what I remember of ServeRAID's, once they designate a drive as
defunct, it's not always so easy to bring it back online unless you
move it to a different SCSI ID (I think it remember's the drive's
serial number). If you know the setup to be otherwise good, and you
have a complete backup on hand (trueimage & ghost work well with this
controller) you could clear the controller's configuration, then on
reboot use the mini-config to write the raid config from the drives to
the controller, then boot into the serveraid CD and the insert the new
hotswap drives and force discovery of them. They should be RDY at
that point to configure volumes
I haven't had to mess with the cofig of our ServeRAID based machines
in some time, so sorry if my memory is a little rusty.
Hope this helps.