IBM X Series Server - Disk Rebuild

[Matt-Page]

Anyone got any experience with the IBM X series servers?

One of our servers had a fit overnight and all disks were showing as failed. I looked in ServeRAID and sure enough they were all failed.

We have 2 arrays setup

Array A = 2x disks mirrored
Array B = 3x disks (RAID 5)
With 1x +HotSpare working for both arrays as a spare.

The two mirrored disks have the O/S on, so i decided to try and mark one of them as online first. One went online and the other came up with a rebuild status. Unfortunately it has just sat their with a Rebuilding status for hours and hours, and it has no progress indicator. I can't tell if it is rebuilding or if it has failed. The last even on it says "Drive is set to Rebuild state".

Anyone here able to help?

P.S. Server is in another country i am using a RSA card to connect to it at BIOS level with ServerGuide CD in it.

 

[DarkHorizon472]

IBM servers are really useless. We currently use them and can't wait to move back to HP.

The easy way to see what is going on is to put in the bootable servraid manager CD (ISO is downloadable on the IBM website). This boots up to a GUI which shows you a lot more than the serverguide CD and it has a lot more options as well. It will allow you to set disks back on line. If this fails power off the server and reseat all the disks. Then boot it up again and see what happens. Failing that you are looking at a full rebuild.

A good tip is to download the bootable IBM firmware patching CD(Again an ISO on the IBM website). When you boot off it it patches firmware automatically to the latest level which stops a lot of the WTF is the server up to moments. If you have to rebuild the server or not make sure you firmware patch it.

IBM servers are really poor and best avoided. HP servers of the same spec are normally cheaper , more relibale and have a much , much better toolset to support them with.

 

[zetec452]

I would recommend you call IBM or hire somebody who is a specialist with IBM kit.