Swapping Drive To Another RAID Controller
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So I have non-important drives in a RAID 1 on the DELL H310. I received the H710. If I unplug the H310, install the H710, and plug in the drives, will it be smart enough to recreate the array? Or does it have to be the exact same card?
It doesn't matter for me, and of course I could just test it. But this seems to have come up a few times recently, so I thought it might be good to have a discussion on it.
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@BRRABill It might see it as a foreign configuration and you can import it, but its hard to say, one of those to just try.
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@brianlittlejohn said:
@BRRABill It might see it as a foreign configuration and you can import it, but its hard to say, one of those to just try.
Yep, what he said. But make sure those drives are right next to each other for simplicity.
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So there is no "this always happens".
It's a "make sure you have a good backup and see what happens" kind of thing?
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Yep, every card is different.
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@brianlittlejohn said:
Yep, every card is different.
What about if the H310 died and I was replacing it with another H310. Would that be plug and plug, or still test and see?
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@BRRABill the fact that it's RAID1 makes this simpler, so even if the card fails to recognize the old config, you still have backups and can create a new array.
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It's always a craps shoot when you are messing with arrays. Sure it's suppose to read the config from the drives and ask to import, but who knows. When the card died, whose to say it didn't take the config on the drive out?
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I came across this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTx3hzYWg1E
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Should work fine. The controllers are designed to migrate the configuration in this way.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Should work fine. The controllers are designed to migrate the configuration in this way.
OK, for giggles I will give it a try and see what happens.
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Worked with no issues. Not even a beep.
Now, I assuming if I had gone with a non-DELL controller, there would have been issues? Or can all cards read the same info on the disk? Is it a standard?
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One "small" issue I had. (And this might lead to some nice hard drive speed discussion.)
I have 2 7200RPM SATYA drvies in there in a RAID1 array.
On the H310, I ended up with the following speed results:
CrystalDiskMark 5.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2015 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/-
MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
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KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes
Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 184.891 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 128.441 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.441 MB/s [ 595.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.474 MB/s [ 359.9 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 132.327 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 127.913 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.620 MB/s [ 151.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.227 MB/s [ 299.6 IOPS]Test : 1024 MiB [C: 11.4% (13.4/116.8 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/01/05 17:59:43
OS : Windows Server 2012 R2 [6.3 Build 9600] (x64)
When I put the H710 and re-tested, I got the following results:
CrystalDiskMark 5.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2015 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/-
MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
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KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes
Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 126.263 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 130.756 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.459 MB/s [ 356.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.514 MB/s [ 369.6 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 116.618 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 130.008 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.491 MB/s [ 119.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.285 MB/s [ 313.7 IOPS]Test : 1024 MiB [C: 43.7% (51.1/116.8 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/01/07 14:45:47
OS : Windows Server 2012 R2 [6.3 Build 9600] (x64)
QUESTION1: What would a normal speed be for these drives? Is this in the expected range?
QUESTION 2: Does the 184 seem like a fluke here?
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@BRRABill said:
Worked with no issues. Not even a beep.
Now, I assuming if I had gone with a non-DELL controller, there would have been issues? Or can all cards read the same info on the disk? Is it a standard?
I haven't heard of anyone actually trying this, but Dell just uses re-branded LSI controllers. Don't know how much firmware customization they've done, but I'd bet the drives could be moved between Dell and LSI controller cards.
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@travisdh1 said:
I haven't heard of anyone actually trying this, but Dell just uses re-branded LSI controllers. Don't know how much firmware customization they've done, but I'd bet the drives could be moved between Dell and LSI controller cards.
Yes this surely would go into the "don't try at home" category, I think.
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@BRRABill said:
@travisdh1 said:
I haven't heard of anyone actually trying this, but Dell just uses re-branded LSI controllers. Don't know how much firmware customization they've done, but I'd bet the drives could be moved between Dell and LSI controller cards.
Yes this surely would go into the "don't try at home" category, I think.
For sure.
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@BRRABill said:
@travisdh1 said:
I haven't heard of anyone actually trying this, but Dell just uses re-branded LSI controllers. Don't know how much firmware customization they've done, but I'd bet the drives could be moved between Dell and LSI controller cards.
Yes this surely would go into the "don't try at
homework" category, I think.Fixed it for you.
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@dafyre said:
@BRRABill said:
@travisdh1 said:
I haven't heard of anyone actually trying this, but Dell just uses re-branded LSI controllers. Don't know how much firmware customization they've done, but I'd bet the drives could be moved between Dell and LSI controller cards.
Yes this surely would go into the "don't try at
homework" category, I think.Fixed it for you.
I was about to say... more like "only" try this at home.
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Oddly enough, when I do the same test on the same drives, on the "E" partition (which is located on the same RAID array as the "C" partition), I get the following results:
Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 109.597 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 104.111 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.924 MB/s [ 469.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.498 MB/s [ 365.7 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 106.960 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 105.491 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.661 MB/s [ 161.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.243 MB/s [ 303.5 IOPS]Test : 1024 MiB [E: 52.6% (183.0/348.1 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/01/07 15:51:24
OS : Windows Server 2012 R2 [6.3 Build 9600] (x64)
