Disaster Recovery Plan–Rebuild System Disk (Dell Server 2900 with PERC RAID controller)
- by Jim Lahman
Goal: Since the system disk is a RAID 1 mirrored set, we can rebuild the shadow set by replacing one of the good sets with a blank disk Steps Shutdown and power down server Remove the disk from bay 9, which is part of the system shadow set. Put this disk on the shelf Insert blank/old disk into the empty bay Label the new disk before inserting it into the empty bay Power up server During the booting process, the following message appears: “Some configured disks have been removed from your system…” Press ‘C’ to Load Configuration utility Press 'Y' to confirm to load the foreign configuration In this example, the system shadow set is Disk Group 2. (Before proceeding, confirm this is the disk group in your case). Expanding the physical disks shows a disk in bay 8 and a missing disk in bay 9. This is correct. Now, we have to include the new inserted disk in this group RAID controller reporting bay 9 is empty There may be times when the new disk is seen as a foreign disk. In this case, do the following: Foreign disk is reported in bay 9 CTRL-N (Next Page) to Foreign Mgt All the disk groups will be displayed. Typically, the disk group containing the foreign disk will be grey. To remove the foreign disk Highlight Controller Press F2 Select Foreign Select Clear (do NOT import the configuration!) Clear the foreign configuration Now the disk can be brought into the system shadow set disk group as a hot spare To include the newly inserted disk into the system shadowset disk group, it must be brought in as a hot spare Highlight Disk Group 2 (VD Management) Hit F2 Select 'Manage Ded. HS' Manage dedicated hot swap Select the disk in bay 9 (Hit space bar to select) Tab to 'OK'. Hit the return key Select hot spare to bring into RAID 1 mirror set Rebuild automatically commences Rebuild in process Restart now or restart after rebuild is completed
