[Info-vax] Smartarray 5300 & hot spare

[Richard B. Gilbert]

gartmann wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> we have a SmartArray 5300 controller with 16 disks. The disks are
> divided into three units with five drives each and the remaining disk
> is assigned as a hot spare to all three arrays.
> 
> Now one drive failed and the unit stopped workin and therefore the
> drive on OpenVMS failed as well.  I thought the spare drive should
> have been used in such a case? Or what is wrong here:
> 
> Unit 0:
> In PDLA mode, Unit 0 is Lun 0.
> Cache status      : enabled
> Max Boot Partition: Unknown
> Volume status     : VOLUME failed
> 1 Data Disk(s) Failed or Removed:
>    Disk 1: (SCSI bus 0, SCSI id 1)
> 5 Data Disk(s) used by lun 0:
>    Disk 0: Partition 0; (SCSI bus 0, SCSI id 0)
>    Disk 1: Partition 0; (SCSI bus 0, SCSI id 1)
>    Disk 2: Partition 0; (SCSI bus 0, SCSI id 2)
>    Disk 3: Partition 0; (SCSI bus 0, SCSI id 3)
>    Disk 4: Partition 0; (SCSI bus 0, SCSI id 4)
> Spare physical drives:
> 1 Spare Disk(s) used by lun 0:
>    Disk 209: (SCSI bus 2, SCSI id 9)
> Logical Volume Raid Level: RAID 5.  Distributed Data Guard
>                            stripe_size=16.0KB
> Logical Volume Capacity : 1117.56 [1199.97] GB
> 
> Unit 1:
> In PDLA mode, Unit 1 is Lun 1.
> Cache status      : enabled
> Max Boot Partition: Unknown
> Volume status     : VOLUME OK
> 5 Data Disk(s) used by lun 1:
>    Disk 6: Partition 0; (SCSI bus 0, SCSI id 6)
>    Disk 8: Partition 0; (SCSI bus 0, SCSI id 8)
>    Disk 9: Partition 0; (SCSI bus 0, SCSI id 9)
>    Disk 200: Partition 0; (SCSI bus 2, SCSI id 0)
>    Disk 201: Partition 0; (SCSI bus 2, SCSI id 1)
> Spare physical drives:
> 1 Spare Disk(s) used by lun 1:
>    Disk 209: (SCSI bus 2, SCSI id 9)
> Logical Volume Raid Level: RAID 5.  Distributed Data Guard
>                            stripe_size=16.0KB
> Logical Volume Capacity : 1117.56 [1199.97] GB
> 
> Unit 2:
> In PDLA mode, Unit 2 is Lun 2.
> Cache status      : enabled
> Max Boot Partition: Unknown
> Volume status     : VOLUME OK
> 5 Data Disk(s) used by lun 2:
>    Disk 202: Partition 255; (SCSI bus 2, SCSI id 2)
>    Disk 203: Partition 0; (SCSI bus 2, SCSI id 3)
>    Disk 204: Partition 0; (SCSI bus 2, SCSI id 4)
>    Disk 206: Partition 0; (SCSI bus 2, SCSI id 6)
>    Disk 208: Partition 0; (SCSI bus 2, SCSI id 8)
> Spare physical drives:
> 1 Spare Disk(s) used by lun 2:
>    Disk 209: (SCSI bus 2, SCSI id 9)
> Logical Volume Raid Level: RAID 5.  Distributed Data Guard
>                            stripe_size=16.0KB
> Logical Volume Capacity : 1117.56 [1199.97] GB
> 
> Regards,
>    Christoph Gartmann

Who makes/made the "Smartarray 5300"?  ISTR that was a Compaq trademark 
but I can't swear to it.

The old DEC HSZ50 and HSZ70 RAID controllers specifically supported a 
spare drive in a RAID-5 set.  If any one of the active drives failed, 
the controller would activate the spare drive and "rebuild it" so that 
the spare drive replaced the failed drive and the set returned to 
normal.  The system manager could yank the failed drive and plug in a 
replacement which became the new spare.