Array Behavior When A Drive Fails; Identifying Failed Drives; Interpreting Drive Leds - Dell EqualLogic PS Series Hardware Owner's Manual

PS6610 Hardware Owner's Manual 2 Drive Maintenance

Array Behavior When a Drive Fails

The PS6610 firmware uses a copy-to-spare operation to replace failing drives. This operation can, in
many cases, improve the performance of the drive replacement process by avoiding a full RAID
rebuild, which provides better reliability.
If a drive fails, replace it. Do not reinstall it in the array. If a replacement drive is not available,
Note:
keep the failed drive in the array until it can be replaced.
If a Spare Drive Is Not Available
If a spare drive is not available, the RAID set will become degraded and performance might be
impaired. However, a RAID 6 set can survive two simultaneous drive failures.
If a spare drive is not available and the failed drive is in a RAID set that is already degraded, data
might be lost and must be recovered from a backup.

Identifying Failed Drives

A drive failure is indicated by:
• An LED located on the drive. See Interpreting Drive LEDs on page 11.
• An LED on the Enclosure Status Indicator.
• A message in the event log or in the Group Manager Alarms panel.
• Indications in the Group Manager group member Disks tab or the CLI
member select show disks
command output.
Inside each drawer, a Drawer Slot Label located on top of the sideplanes shows the drive numbering
within each row. See Disk-Drive Slot Numbers on page 10.

Interpreting Drive LEDs

The drive LED is shown in Figure 7. The drive LED states are described in Table 7.
Figure 7: LEDs on Drive Enclosure
11