Managing Drive Failures with AN!CDB
Note: At this time, only LSI-based controllers are supported. Please see this section of the AN!Cluster Tutorial 2 for required node configuration. |
The most common repaid needed on Anvil! nodes is the replacement of failing or failed physical disks.
AN!CDB provides a very easy to use interface for managing this. In this tutorial, we will physically eject a drive from a small running logical volume, simulating a failure.
Introducing AN!CDB Drive Management
On the main AN!CDB page, you can click on either node's name in the "Cluster Nodes - Control" section.
Click on the name of the node you want to work on. In our case, we will work on an-c05n01.alteeve.ca.
Storage Display Window
The storage display window shows your storage controller(s), their auxiliary power supply for write-back caching if installed, the logical disk(s) and each logical disk's constituent drives.
The auxiliary power and logical disks will be slightly indented under their parent controller.
The physical disks associates with a given logical disk are further indented, to show their association.
In this example, we have only one RAID controller, it has an auxiliary power pack and a single logical volume has been created.
The Logical volume is a RAID level 5 array with four physical disks.
Managing the Physical Disk Identification ID Light
The first task we will explore is using identification lights to find a physical drive in a node.
If a drive fails completely, it's fault light will light up, making the failed drive easy to find. However, the AN!CDB alert system can notify us of pending failures.
In these cases, the drive's fault light may not illuminate. So it becomes critical to identify the failing drive. Removing the wrong drive, when another drive is unhealthy, may well leave your node non-operational.
That's no fun.
Each physical drive, whether in an array or unconfigured, will have a pair of buttons labelled Turn On and Turn Off. Which you click will determine if the drive's ID light illuminates or turns off.
Illumination a Drive's ID Light
Let's illuminate!
We will identify the drive with the somewhat-cryptic name '252:0'.
The storage page will reload, indicating whether the command succeeded or not.
If you now look at the front of your node, you should see one of the drives lit up.
Most excellent.
Shutting off a Drive's ID Light
To turn the ID light off, simply click on the drive's Turn Off button.
As before, the success or failure will be reported.
Refreshing The Storage Page
Any questions, feedback, advice, complaints or meanderings are welcome. | |||
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