2

I'm entirely new to RAID management and the Dell PERC H710, but finding myself having to work with one. Hoping to get some advice before I do anything foolish.

My situation is that we have a PowerEdge T320 with a RAID 1 virtual disk consisting of 2 physical disks. The VD already has an OS installed, has been in use for quite a while, and has user data.

We intend to yank out the original disks, put in new disks, and temporarily re-purpose the machine.

My question is: can I pull out all the PDs of the VD, clear the controller cache, and later restore the configuration after re-inserting all the PDs?

I understand the PERC allows importing of configuration, and will likely prompt to import a foreign configuration when I put the original disks back in. I'm just not sure if importing will get me the original VD back, as though the re-purposing never happened.

We have done the necessary back-up, but it would be nice to not have to set up the machine all over again.

[EDIT] Just had a thought, and would appreciate if anyone can confirm where the configuration data on a disk is stored. If it is written to the disk itself, I think there is a much better chance that the restore/import will be done correctly.

aerobot
  • 123
  • Thanks for the answers. I won't select any as correct for now; when I do restore my original disks (successfully or not), I'll return to supply an answer. – aerobot May 17 '15 at 05:12
  • I successfully restored my original configuration by re-inserting both disks and performing an import of foreign configuration within the PERC BIOS.

    That's it, no fuss, no drama =)

     – aerobot Jul 02 '15 at 07:59

2 Answers2

1

You have a pretty decent chance of this working, so long as you power down before removing both drives (be sure that it's a "clean" shutdown).

The configuration data for a VD is stored on each of its drives (each one gets a copy), and a copy kept locally on the controller.

If you follow through with your plan as you've stated it, I expect that it's almost certain to work. I'd normally warn you that you shouldn't rely on this method, but you've already stated that you have the data backed up in case it doesn't work out. It sounds like you're planning to try this as a potential time-saver so you don't have to redeploy your OS, and that's about the most you should use it for.

JimNim
  • 2,796
0

In theory, your plan could work. I haven't attempted this on a H710, but having had to do a similar thing several years ago on a PERC/6i. It was quite the ordeal, and it ended with my having to restore from backups. The PERCs have greatly improved since then, so you may have a better result.

Do you have a bare-metal restore image of the volume that will be temporarily suspended from existence? That may cut down on your reload time significantly if it comes to that.

JuxVP
  • 106
  • Thank you for your insight. The machine was never really intended as a mission-critical sort of server, so we had no tools or plans for a restore image. – aerobot May 15 '15 at 12:57