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Not a good start to the year....

Gatt

By Gatt
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Gatt

Gatt

Posted
Posted

Came into work this morning to find this:

 

http://www.gattancha.co.uk/craig/smart_apps01.JPG

 

So now I have no SQL Server and no WDS/SCCM server.. oh and no AV or Staff Intranet due to SQL being down..

 

Now I have to hope that the school will pay for a new HDD and that it recovers with minimal data loss - cannot recall what RAID settings are on the server...

sted

sted

Posted
Posted
as long as its not raid 0 it should run quite happily with 1 drive dead /dying and its a predicted failure dosent mean it has fail just that its expected to fail tbh id chance it but do a full backup asap
rad

rad

Posted
Posted
You mean you don't have it written down somewhere how your servers are configured? If so, big whoopsy

I'd be cacking my pants having read your reply if I was Gatt, not helpful now the sh t his hit the fan. (sorry my opinion only)

 

I hope its ok for you, I have little knowledge on RAID config I'm afraid, but do hope it works out.

Duke

Duke

Posted
Posted

You should be able to drop into the RAID card BIOS at startup, or if you can get into Windows then you may already have RAID monitoring software installed. From there you should be able to see the RAID type, disk layout, HDD status and RAID status (e.g. healthy, degraded, rebuilding, etc.).

 

So now I have no SQL Server and no WDS/SCCM server.. oh and no AV or Staff Intranet due to SQL being down..

 

How come? From that message on screen I would suggest the server should boot, but is warning you to get ready to swap out a drive. I don't know HP's or their terminology, but I'd guess the server crashed (or has been rebooted), is telling you the array accelerator (RAM/Flash on the RAID card?) has data on it that will now be written to the disks, and one of the disks in the array has a SMART warning.

 

Now I have to hope that the school will pay for a new HDD and that it recovers with minimal data loss

 

If you have anything other than RAID 0, even a drive failure shouldn't mean data loss, and as long as you replace the drive and it rebuilds before another failure you should have no problems.

 

I take it the server isn't under warranty? If it is then you should usually be entitled to a new HDD (HP might get you to run some disk checks first). If the school isn't willing to keep your servers under warranty or let you keep spare parts in stock for swapping out then personally I think you need to have a conversation with management about what their expected level of uptime is. If they want things to keep running properly then they need to support you with the appropriate staff, training and budget. If they aren't bothered about keeping servers running 24/7/365 then look on the bright side - less stress for you. :)

 

Chris

Gatt

Gatt

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Right, update time..

 

Powered the server off all day yesterday, so when I came in this morning, I first fired it up into safe mode and it logged on as local admin fine and responsive enough

No obvious errors from the OS yet so may be in luck here

 

Unfortunately it IS indeed RAID 0!

 

The failing drive is, however, NOT in the array that the SQL Databases are in (which is RAID1+0) so all I need to do is backup all 200Gb of the Data for that array, get a new HDD which the school are now counting beans for.. rebuild the array (RAID 1+0 at the very least!) and copy the data back over!

Luckily today is an INSET day so the server wont get much of a hammering....

Gatt

Gatt

Posted
  • Author
Posted

@Hightower - I can see where you are coming from with that and yeah, I should have had it written down .. and certainly will be now!!

 

Fingers crossed I don't lose the data and dont need any new underwear!

SYNACK

SYNACK

Posted
Posted

I agree the server should boot if it is just a failed drive, the other message just means that the system lost power uncleanly and stuff was stuch in the battery backed cache. This should write back alright once the system boots. I did have an older system that did hang on this prompt though and thanks to a faulty drive backplane did not write the information back correctly. It still booted but was not healthy so when you do get it back up do a backup.

 

The drives should still be under warrenty for the life of the server warrenty assuming the drives were brought with it. Most have a standard three year warrenty so if it is within that time the drive should still be under warrenty also.

 

One thing that is completely unrelated but could become important in future is the firmware version of your iLO controller. Some of the hp servers had problems with installing Server 2008 R2 with older versions of iLO firmware (wasted 3 hours of my time) and so if you are looking at upgrading its windows version at any time it would be a good idea to upgrade that when you get the other stuff sorted as it could save you from some nasty hassels in the long run.

sted

sted

Posted
Posted
its worth pointing out that i believe hp by default only cover drives in servers for 1 year now, 3 years is an option (this is what im told by my hod who does the buying) and im not sure when this dates from
john

john

Posted
Posted
its worth pointing out that i believe hp by default only cover drives in servers for 1 year now, 3 years is an option (this is what im told by my hod who does the buying) and im not sure when this dates from

 

:eek: thats a new one, they were always covered under the warranty of the Server they were in in the past thats a new one!

localzuk

localzuk

Posted
Posted
its worth pointing out that i believe hp by default only cover drives in servers for 1 year now, 3 years is an option (this is what im told by my hod who does the buying) and im not sure when this dates from

 

Never seen that either, its always been 3 years by default for me!

Duke

Duke

Posted
Posted
Not any help to this problem but Dell give 5 years standard warranty on all parts in the server at no extra cost

 

Really...? On the Dell website now and my only option is a 3 year warranty which is 'included in the price' but it is not free. I'm looking at quotes for a 2 year warranty extensions on Dell servers that run anywhere from £300-£500+. Don't get me wrong, an extension will generally cost more than the original warranty (the hardware is older therefore more likely to fail) but Dell (and all server) warranties are expensive in my experience. A 5 year NBD warranty on a Dell server will add significantly to the cost - at least to the best of my knowledge! :)

Gatt

Gatt

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Back tot he OP for a sec..

Whilst I managed to copy the files over to another HDD yesterday a thought has just occurred to me - it wont have copied the NTFS or shares over will it?

Anyone know the best way to copy 133GB worth of data and keep both NTFS/Share permissions as well as the actual shares themselves (or will they be reshared by windows anyway when the new driver array is created?)

Duke

Duke

Posted
Posted
Duke I would check with your county council as the last two I worked for had a county council / dell login page with major discounts. About 45% off and no extra for 5 year warranty.

 

Thanks, I'll definitely need to look into this! We've got a Dell Premier login and we're not paying list price on stuff, but I've never seen anything about free 5 Year warranties so I'll need to do some investigating... :)

 

Back tot he OP for a sec..

 

No, shares on run from the server, so copying the files will just get the files rather than the configuration of those files. How many shares are we talking? If it's only a few then you can go to Computer Management > Shared Folders > Shares and make a note of what they are and what permissions are set.

 

xcopy takes the following argument: /O Copies file ownership and ACL information.

 

There was also a tool from EduGeek somewhere I think that was supposed to be really good for file migrations. Robocopy is also definitely worth a look and I think there is a GUI available for it.

 

If you want to copy and restore the files exactly as they were and you can't clone the entire server, then I think you need to be looking at backup software that will allow you to backup all the files and their permissions, and the configuration of the shares on the server, then restore this at a later date. If the data you're moving is fairly generic (e.g. folder names = usernames, share name = folder name, permissions = username full control) then this is usually fairly easy to script, so it may be easier to copy the files back then configure shares and ACLs. :)

 

Chris

  • Thanks 1
srochford

srochford

Posted
Posted

If you're not going to replace the drive from which Windows is running (probably C:) then the shares will stay along with share permissions when you fit a new drive (as long as it has the same drive letter and folder structure)

 

The file/folder permissions (NTFS ACLS) are stored on the disc - as others have said, you can back those up with robocopy /sec or xcopy /o to your backup drive and then reverse the process to the new drive.

  • Thanks 1
Gatt

Gatt

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Posted

Thanks guys - I'll look over Robocopy again and see if I can suss out how to copy the permissions over - may just blank the backup drive and recopy with robocopy and the correct switches

 

despite the SMART error - there does not yet appear to be any problems on the disk - but would rather get it swapped sooner rather than later...

Butuz

Butuz

Posted
Posted

Can't you use MS Backup in order to take a full backup of all drives with system state?

 

When you replace the drive you should be able to check consistency and rebuild the Raid 10 array in the RAID BIOS with no dataloss?

 

Oh and having Raid 0 for the O/S is a really bad idea.

 

Good luck!!

 

Butuz

Duke

Duke

Posted
Posted
Oh and having Raid 0 for the O/S is a really bad idea.

 

Having RAID 0 is a bad idea for any data you'd be bothered about losing lol! Technically it's not even RAID on account of no 'Redundancy'. :(

sted

sted

Posted
Posted
Having RAID 0 is a bad idea for any data you'd be bothered about losing lol! Technically it's not even RAID on account of no 'Redundancy'. :(

 

only way i use raid 0 is my home nas box which is my backup so if that dies all ive lost is my copy spare copy of the data

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