2019-08-31

RAID-6 in peril


I been away from the office most of this week, Yesterday I was back and decided to do a visual inspection of the Data Warehouse servers, to my horror I saw this on the very important Database Server:








Two failed disks in a RAID-6 array, not something you like to see, but thank God I chose RAID-6 over RAID-5 when I configured the server 2012. Yesterday was the last Summer Friday this year, all persons responsible for the server was out of office, afters some asking around I got the number to DELL support, after an insane number of robot questions, the robot handed me over to the human switchboard lady who to my surprise understood my problem and connected me to human support Raymond who efficiently took me through a small set of reasonable questions, then told me 'alright I send you two disks they should arrive in four hours' (they arrived within two hours). Raymond was not only helpful and efficient he also understood my last name JOHANSSON and could spell it right, something impossible for most native english speakers. 'JO.. what? can you spell it please' is the normal response when I say my last name and I'm terrible at spelling in english. I avoid spelling by telling my last name is Johansen which is the Norwegian variant of my last name and put a heavy emphasis on second syllable JoHANsen and add "it's double S".  That works both in Britain and US. But Raymond got it right the first time he just asked 'is it double S'.
One of the guys responsible for the server came in to the office fetched the disks at the reception and we together hot swapped one of the failed disks. Now some 24 hours later it is 60% recreated. I really hope it will be 100% recreated before another disk pops. The disks are from 2012, even the failing disks have done a very good job in continuous heave duty since then. It's the monitoring that is failing, and it's partly my fault. Wish me good luck I really need it.

Update 2019-08-31 16:20 CET 91% recreated still counting and looking good☺
Update 2019-08-31 17:20 CET 100% recreated☺

Now we should replace the other failing disk, but my younger son son took my car earlier this afternoon and I do not go to the office in the weekend by public transport to replace a disk, so that have to wait until tomorrow or to Monday.






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