9000 R Series IP Recorder with RAID Installation Guide
23
Feature Overview
Hot Spare Hard Drive
If you have a model with the hot spare hard drive option and a drive in the array fails, the system
automatically begins to rebuild the failing/failed drive using the hot spare drive.
The hot spare drive is available on the 9248 R and 9264 R models with 6 or 8 hard drives. You must
purchase the recorder with the hot spare option.
Health alerts inform you if there is a problem with a hard drive that requires a hot spare rebuild. You
can use the Command Client or the Administrator Console software application user interface to
monitor health alerts.
•
In the Command Client, monitor the Health panel and/or the System Overview tab. See the
Command Enterprise and Client User Guide
for more information.
•
In the Administrator Console, monitor the Alert Inbox in the Health Monitoring task type. See
the
Administrator Console User Manual
for more information.
Tip:
With an SSH client you can access the recorder using the Provisioning Interface and use the
SHOWDISK command to check whether your RAID includes a hot spare drive.
Hot Spare Rebuild Process
1
If one of the hard drives in the array fails, the Administrator Console and the Command Client
software applications display the following health alerts (you can check either application):
•
RAID Disk failed
— there is a problem with a hard drive.
•
RAID Rebuilding
— the system has triggered the hot spare rebuilding process.
2
Note:
The rebuild process can take hours to days to complete, depending on your system. If
using RAID 6, the system may have to rebuild two disks, and with the hot spare configuration
there may be two copy back procedures. You can check the copy back process using the
SHOWDISK provisioning command. Do not remove drives after replacing them during the rebuild.
3
When the rebuild is complete, the alert status changes to:
•
RAID degraded
— the rebuild is complete, but the process is not complete.
The process is not complete because in the RAID array, all drives must remain in the same
assigned slots. To accomplish this, after the system completes the rebuild, it copies the
information from the hot spare drive to the new drive that has replaced the failed drive. For the
system to start the process of copying, all of the following must be true:
a
The rebuild is complete (the
RAID degraded
alert replaces the
RAID rebuilding
alert).
b The failed hard drive is successfully replaced (see “Replacing a Hard Drive” on page 27).
c
The
RAID Disk failed
alert is resolved. You can see this in either the Command Client or the
Administrator Console user interface:
•
Command Client Health panel, the State column for the alert displays a green check mark.
•
Administrator Console Alert Inbox, the State column for the alert displays
Resolved
.
4
When the conditions above are all met (a, b, and c), the system starts to copy the information
from the hot spare drive to the new drive, in the same slot as the original failed drive.
This ensures that when the process is complete, the drives in the array and the hot spare drive
are all in the same slots that they were before the drive failure occurred, and the system is back
to normal. The replaced drive is active and the hot spare is standing by to act as a spare again.
When the copy is complete and the system is back to normal, the
RAID degraded
alert changes
state to a green check mark in Command Client and
Resolved
in the Administrator console.
