Newbie question on UCS C210 M2 RAID - hard drive replacement

[Peter Coggle]

Hi UCS experts,

Am new to the world of servers and UCS. 

We have a UCS  C210 M2 rack mount server with hard disk drives in RAID 6 setup running some non-critical services. One of the hard drives (A03-D146GC2 146GB) had gone faulty. So, I ordered a replacement hard drive. Only after receiving the replacement drive, I noticed that the original faulty drive is a Seagate drive and the replacement drive I received is a Fujitsu drive. But both the Seagate and Fujitsu drive have the same Cisco part number (Cisco A03-D146GC2). Since I ordered the replacement using the part number only and not using the hard drive make, I am not in a position to return the Fujitsu drive.

My question is

* Will I be able to replace the Seagate drive with the Fujitsu drive as they have the same Cisco part numbers?

* What are the precautions (like firmware checks) I need to take when replacing the drive?

* Is it OK if I can just hot-swap the drives? Or should I rebuild the RAID?

Appreciate your support.

Thanks,

Peter

[Kirk J · Accepted solution]

Greetings.

Cisco sources multiple vendors for harddrives with the same specs.  This helps cover availability in case one vendor is having production issues, slow to ship, etc.

Those drives have been tested to work on the qualified raid controllers along side any other tested drives regardless of brand.  The limitations that apply would be keeping technology the same within a raid group (i.e. SAS with SAS, Sata with Sata), and ideally keep the same specs (spindle speed) together.

The drives are hotplug, so you can remove and replace the drive and the raid controller should start to rebuild/reintegrate the replacement drive with data & parity info.

You will want to check the drive firmware by booting a later firmware such a a 1.54 HUU image for a C220M3, and only run the HD firmware check.  Unfortunately the 1.4x HUU firmware utilities that apply to the C200/C210 M2 series didn't include HD firmware, so you have to use a later HUU series.

The Raid 6 VD I/O throughput will be a little bit slower while the rebuild is going on, and the raid6 VD will show degraded during the rebuild time.  Rebuild times vary, but for a 146GB drive I would expect it to take around 2-4 hours.

Please keep in mind the C210M2 series servers are end of support in Nov 2017.

In regards to the returns, if your Seagate drive (as Cisco PID A03-D146GC2) was still under Cisco contract, you would be able to return it as part of the RMA process.  It would not be under Seagate MFG warranty, so you would not be able to return it directly to Seagate anyway.

Thanks,

Kirk...

[Peter Coggle]

Hi Kirk,

Thanks a lot for your detailed reply. Really helps a newbie like me. You are a star!

Thankfully both the faulty and the replacement drives are SAS drives. So, I hope I am good.

The label on the back of the replacement Fujitsu drive mentions that the firmware version is 5701 and the revision number is A0.

The label on the back of the faulty Seagate drive mentions that the firmware version is 0002.

* Can I still hot-swap the drives irrespective of their firmware differences?

* And the HUU 1.54 release notes don't mention UCS C210). It only mentions C220 and C240. Is that of any concern?

* Will upgrading the HUU need any server shutdown/restart?

Thanks a lot again for your help!!

Regards,

Peter