ESXi 4.x Failed Drive within RAID 5 Array - How to Proceed?

[DevotedDad]

Good Morning,

I received an alert from our production box - checked on it and we have a single drive failure within the RAID 5 array.  Everything is continuing to run (albeit a bit slower than normal), however what's the procedure for replacing a RAID 5 slice under ESXi 4?  This is a Dell R710.

Please advise.

Thank you!

Kenneth

[JohnADCO]

Call Dell,  they send the drive out,  you replace it?

I'm not sure exactly what your asking here.   Pretty modern host,  I'd expect it to rebuild and be happy again.

[weinstein5]

It is simple since the controller will fix the RAID set when a new drive is inserted - You should be able to power down you esxi host - replace the the bad drive - power on the server - depending on your RAID controller you might have to go into the c ontroller BIOS to incroporate the new drive - theesxi host should come up -  the raid controller take care of the new drive and esxi will not even know -

[DevotedDad]

Thanks so much, weinstein5.

Ken

[ETastic]

VMware doesn't handle your server's RAID, that is completed through the Dell RAID interface. When you first installed the server you or someone followed Dell instructions to boot the system up, set up the RAID level on the drives and then loaded ESXi or whatever flavor OS you choose.

When you replace the drive it should rebuild the RAID level, if it's not automatic then you need to go through the Dell RAID setup tools, normaly when you boot the system you'll have the options to press a combination of keys to enter the RAID setup.