HP visualize J6000 work stations manual Hot-Plug Process, Replacing a Failed Disk Drive

LVD Product Information

Front Panel Components

The Hot-Plug Process

The physical aspect of inserting and removing a disk drive is discussed in the document that comes with the drive. However, the operating system must be prepared for the insertion or removal of a disk, or unexpected and harmful effects may occur.

There is a significant difference between the terms “hot-pluggable” and “hot-swappable”. Hot swapping happens at the device level; that is, a hot-swappable device manages insertion/removal on its own without assistance from HP-UX commands. The disk drive(s) in the J6000 are not hot-swappable; they are merely hot-pluggable.Thus, a manual software procedure must be done in order to safely remove or insert disk drives while the system is running.

The hot-plug process allows you to replace a defective disk drive in a high-available system while it is running.

Replacing a Failed Disk Drive

In the context of replacing a failed disk drive, the system administrator must determine which disk has failed. Depending on how the system was set up, the identity of the failed drive may or may not be obvious. This determination may be done in either of two ways:

• Tracking the error message written by the LVM (Logical Volume Manager) to the system console and/or a log file. For information on LVM commands, see the man pages for vgchange, lvreduce, vgfgrestore, lvlnboot, lvextend, lvsync, etc.

•If installed, run the diagnostic utility Support Tool Manager (xstm) to determine disk malfunction.

The removal of a defective disk drive from an active file system is supported through LVM commands if hot-pluggable disks have been configured into the HP-UX file system with LVM. To provide high availability, without impact to users, the disks must also be configured as mirrored disks. Disk-mirroring is accomplished through use of the MirrorDisk/UX software (HP part number B5403BA); for information on classes, see

http://www.hgp.com/education/courses/h628s.html.

No graphical user interface is currently offered through the System Administrator Manager (SAM) for doing the required LVM commands because manipulation of the LVM requires specialized knowledge that only experienced system administrators are expected to have (see below for details).

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