TwistedHelixis Posted January 25, 2019 Posted January 25, 2019 Current server was installed without a hot spare so I have ordered one. When it arrives I am wondering if I can plug it in while the server is live? The server is PowerEdge T440 and the raid card is perc h730p. I have spent the last 20 minutes dredging through websites but can't locate this one bit of info (Google powers are weak today)
synaesthesia Posted January 25, 2019 Posted January 25, 2019 From memory yes, if it's a physical server and you have the relevant raid controller software installed on the machine you will be able to provision it as a hotspare via that.
3s-gtech Posted January 25, 2019 Posted January 25, 2019 SAS drive? Usually it'll hot plug, Dell suggest that the backplane is hot-swappable. I *ahem* may have hot plugged SATA drives in servers before, on old hardware, and it worked. Not that I recommend it.
TwistedHelixis Posted January 25, 2019 Author Posted January 25, 2019 Just checked and it is SATA drives. So you suggest shutting the server down, install drive, power on server and config as hot spare in OS using Dell server manager???
synaesthesia Posted January 25, 2019 Posted January 25, 2019 Don't think I've ever had anything nasty happen hot-plugging sata drives, even in consumer devices. In my unprofessional opinion, just do it; if any nasty side effects occur then apologise and never mind, you've got the hotspare installed. Professional opinion; organise some downtime just in case, it'll only be 5 minutes max if you configure via raid software rather than the controller UI.
Norphy Posted January 25, 2019 Posted January 25, 2019 If the server has got hotswappable drive bays on the front, just plug the drive in. It'll be fine. If you have to take the server apart to get at the drives then yes, turn it off before you do that
PotNoodleTech Posted January 25, 2019 Posted January 25, 2019 Not necessarily. Your controller supports hot swap, not all SATA drives actually support hot swapping officially. If it a SAS drive then it's 99% certain. SATA you are gonna need to check the drive itself (make/model) and then can find out if it supports it or not. Best practice if your not sure is to shut down, and then boot into the RAID bios and make sure all is tickety boo before you boot into actual windows.
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