Dell R900, ESXi 5, RAID10 - Parity check in progress?

[jimxms2]

Hi Guys,

I'm just in the process of setting up  the above and created a fresh RAID10 array on the server consisting of 4x 2TB hard disks. However, when I view the server health status I get yellow triangles next to each of the disks saying:

Disk Drive Bay 1 Drive x: Parity check in progress - Assert (Warning)

I didn't think that RAID10 stored parity?

The drive performance does seem somewhat low though as I'm only getting 50mb/s transfer in a VM (win 2k8, copy of 3gb file to same disk) which is about half of what I was getting for one of the hard disks not raid'ed on a direct win2k8 install!

[Gkeerthy]

RAID 10 do not use parity, its combination of stripping and mirroring, can you check if any HDD is degraded by using DRAC ? it is good to open a case with DELL

[jimxms2]

I don't have drac configured on the server at the mo, but nothing on the LCD screen at the front of the server mentions any problems. I would have also thought that if the array was degraded, one of the HDD caddies would have an amber/red light?

The HDD's do seem to have constant activity though - even with no VM's started?!?

[gregsn]

I suspect that when it says "parity check" it actually means "verifying" or "building."

[sparrowangelste]

exactly what gregsn said.

when you build a new raid its going to a check phase.

same hting happens on my equallogic san boxes.

depending on the size could take 12-24 hours...

[uni-hacker]

How long did it take for your RAID 10 parity check to run (for the VMware warning message to disappear)?