Adding A Spare Disk When You Create The Raid; Adding A Spare Disk To An Existing Raid; Removing A Spare Disk From A Raid; Managing Disk Failure And Raid Recovery - Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 10 SP2 - STORAGE ADMINISTRATION GUIDE 05-15-2009 Administration Manual

6.4.2 Adding a Spare Disk When You Create the RAID

When you create a RAID 1, 4, or 5 in EVMS, specify the Spare Disk in the Configuration Options
dialog box. You can browse to select the available device, segment, or region that you want to be the
RAID's spare disk. For information, see
Software RAID," on page

6.4.3 Adding a Spare Disk to an Existing RAID

The RAID 1, 4, or 5 device can be active and in use when you add a spare disk to it. If the RAID is
operating normally, the specified disk is added as a spare and it acts as a hot standby for future
failures. If the RAID is currently degraded because of a failed disk, the specified disk is added as a
spare disk, then it is automatically activated as a replacement disk for the failed disk, and it begins
synchronizing the data and parity information.
1 Prepare a disk, segment, or region to use as the replacement disk, just as you did for the
component devices of the RAID device.
2 In EVMS, select the Actions > Add > Spare Disk to a Region (the
EVMS GUI).
3 Select the RAID device you want to manage from the list of Regions, then click Next.
4 Select the device to use as the spare disk.
5 Click Add.

6.4.4 Removing a Spare Disk from a RAID

The RAID 1, 4, or 5 device can be active and in use when you remove its spare disk.
1 In EVMS, select the Actions > Remove > Spare Disk from a Region (the
the EVMS GUI).
2 Select the RAID device you want to manage from the list of Regions, then click Next.
3 Select the spare disk.
4 Click Remove.

6.5 Managing Disk Failure and RAID Recovery

Section 6.5.1, "Understanding the Disk Failure and RAID Recovery," on page 87
Section 6.5.2, "Identifying the Failed Drive," on page 88
Section 6.5.3, "Replacing a Failed Device with a Spare," on page 89
Section 6.5.4, "Removing the Failed Disk," on page 90

6.5.1 Understanding the Disk Failure and RAID Recovery

RAIDs 1, 4, and 5 can survive a disk failure. A RAID 1 device survives if all but one mirrored array
fails. Its read performance is degraded without the multiple data sources available, but its write
performance might actually improve when it does not write to the failed mirrors. During the
Step 5d in Section 6.2, "Creating and Configuring a
81.
plug-in for the
addspare
plug-in for
remspare
Managing Software RAIDs with EVMS 87