I’ve had a HP DL360 hosting my blog, MySQL, SMTP and IMAP servers for a while now. The server’s been great and I’ve always intended to add an online spare (a.k.a. hot spare) for a little piece of mind. I’ve finally got around to it and it turns out that the syntax for using the CLI configuration tool from HP is a bit cryptic so this is a few notes on how I got the job done.
Tools & Documentation
Tracking down the tools for the job was a bit of a pain. To save you some time the documentation you want is here: Controller Reference Guide
HP actually supports the configuration tool (hpacucli) for Debian and they provide a package through the Proliant Support Pack apt repository. You can add the repository to your sources.list file with the following line:
deb http://downloads.linux.hp.com/SDR/downloads/ProLiantSupportPack/ lenny/current non-free
A Few Basic Commands
The general syntax for the hpacucli command is something like [parameter=value]. But to do something useful like dump out all of the disks on the controller (I’ve only got one on my server) you’ll do something like this:
flihp@server:~$ sudo hpacucli controller slot=0 physicaldrive all show
Smart Array P400i in Slot 0 (Embedded)
array A
physicaldrive 2I:1:5 (port 2I:box 1:bay 5, SATA, 32.0 GB, OK)
array B
physicaldrive 1I:1:1 (port 1I:box 1:bay 1, SAS, 72 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 1I:1:2 (port 1I:box 1:bay 2, SAS, 72 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 1I:1:3 (port 1I:box 1:bay 3, SAS, 72 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 1I:1:4 (port 1I:box 1:bay 4, SAS, 72 GB, OK)
unassigned
physicaldrive 2I:1:6 (port 2I:box 1:bay 6, SAS, 72 GB, OK)
So there are 6 disks attached to the controller. For this task I’m concerned with those that make up array B and the unassigned disk. This disk is the one that I wish to add as an online spare to array B. But first lets dump so info about array B:
flihp@server:~$ sudo hpacucli controller slot=0 array B show
Smart Array P400i in Slot 0 (Embedded)
Array: B
Interface Type: SAS
Unused Space: 0 MB
Status: OK
That’s not very hlepful … Let’s try something else. The documentation says something about logical drives so lets try that:
flihp@www:~$ sudo hpacucli controller slot=0 array B logicaldrive all show
Smart Array P400i in Slot 0 (Embedded)
array B
logicaldrive 2 (136.7 GB, RAID 1+0, OK)
That’s what I wanted to see: the logical drives that are on array B. As you can see this is 136.7 GB and configured as RAID 1+0. This makes sense since it is a RAID 1+0 made up of 4x72GB SAS drives. I’ve only allocated one logical drive on this array because I’m using LVM to create logical volumes in software. This is just how I like to do things. It may very well be faster and just as convenient to allocate more logical drives at the controller level but that’s another debate for another time. For now let’s stay focused on adding the unallocated disk as an online spare to array B.
Assigning an Online Spare
The specific syntax is spelled out in the manual I linked above. We’ve gathered all the necessary data for the command above and it looks like this:
flihp@server:~$ sudo hpacucli controller slot=0 array B add spares=2I:1:6
The target is controller slot=0 array B. This is the identifier for the array discussed above. The command is add spares which is pretty self explanatory. The last part is the identifier for the physical device we’re adding as a spare. If you scroll a bit up you’ll see that I got this identifier by asking the controller to dump info on all attached physical drives. If you want to see which drive this is on your system you can actually make the drive light on it flash which I thought was pretty cool (see the manual for details).
Executing the above command produced no output so you can either assume everything went as planned or you can check up on the array that we just modified:
flihp@www:~$ sudo hpacucli controller slot=0 array B physicaldrive all show
Smart Array P400i in Slot 0 (Embedded)
array B
physicaldrive 1I:1:1 (port 1I:box 1:bay 1, SAS, 72 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 1I:1:2 (port 1I:box 1:bay 2, SAS, 72 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 1I:1:3 (port 1I:box 1:bay 3, SAS, 72 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 1I:1:4 (port 1I:box 1:bay 4, SAS, 72 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 2I:1:6 (port 2I:box 1:bay 6, SAS, 72 GB, OK, spare)
Sweet! Now that extra drive is lined up to be a fail-over if one of the other drives in the array fails.
technomasochism 