HP Smart Array B140i User manual

HPE Dynamic Smart Array B140i
RAID Controller
User Guide
Abstract
This document is for the person who installs, administers, and troubleshoots servers and storage systems. Hewlett Packard Enterprise
assumes you are qualified in the servicing of computer equipment and trained in recognizing hazards in products with hazardous energy
levels.
Part Number:788039-003b
April 2016
Edition: 4

© Copyright 2014, 2016 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP
The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for Hewlett Packard Enterprise products and services
are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting
an additional warranty. Hewlett Packard Enterprise shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
Microsoft®, Windows®, and Windows Server® are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States
and/or other countries.
Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.
Red Hat® is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
VMware® is a registered trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions.
Ubuntu and Canonical are registered trademarks of Canonical Ltd.

Contents 3
Contents
Overview...................................................................................................................................................5
About the HPE Dynamic Smart Array B140i RAID controller...................................................................................5
Features ...................................................................................................................................................................5
Enabling and configuring the controller.....................................................................................................6
Boot mode ................................................................................................................................................................6
Enabling the controller..............................................................................................................................................6
Configuring an array.................................................................................................................................................7
Setting the controller read cache..............................................................................................................................7
Installing device drivers.............................................................................................................................8
Hewlett Packard Enterprise product QuickSpecs.....................................................................................................8
Device drivers overview ...........................................................................................................................................8
VMware ESX operating systems..............................................................................................................................8
Installing the device driver as an update .......................................................................................................8
Installing Linux device drivers ..................................................................................................................................9
Installing device drivers (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6)...................................................................................9
Installing device drivers (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7).................................................................................10
Installing device drivers (SUSE Enterprise Linux) .......................................................................................11
Installing device drivers (Ubuntu Server Linux)...........................................................................................12
Windows operating systems...................................................................................................................................13
Manually injecting the device driver during OS installation .........................................................................13
Replacing, moving, or adding hard drives...............................................................................................15
Drive LEDs .............................................................................................................................................................15
Recognizing drive failure ........................................................................................................................................15
Effects of a hard drive failure.......................................................................................................................16
Compromised fault tolerance.......................................................................................................................16
Recovering from compromised fault tolerance............................................................................................17
Replacing hard drives.............................................................................................................................................17
Guidelines....................................................................................................................................................17
Data recovery (rebuild)...........................................................................................................................................18
Time required for a rebuild ..........................................................................................................................18
Abnormal termination of a rebuild................................................................................................................19
Moving hard drives and arrays ...............................................................................................................................20
Adding drives..........................................................................................................................................................21
Migrating hard drives to an optional Smart Array controller ...................................................................................21
Migrating hard drives to an optional Smart Array controller (Windows) ......................................................21
Migrating drives to an optional host bus adapter.........................................................................................22
Software and configuration utilities .........................................................................................................23
HPE Smart Storage Administrator..........................................................................................................................23
Service Pack for ProLiant.......................................................................................................................................23
Intelligent Provisioning ...........................................................................................................................................24
HPE UEFI System Utilities .....................................................................................................................................24
Using HPE UEFI System Utilities ................................................................................................................24
Diagnostic tools ......................................................................................................................................................25
Keeping the controller current ................................................................................................................................25
Support and other resources ..................................................................................................................26
Support and training information ............................................................................................................................26
Electrostatic discharge............................................................................................................................27
Preventing electrostatic discharge .........................................................................................................................27
Grounding methods to prevent electrostatic discharge ..........................................................................................27

Contents 4
Warranty and regulatory information.......................................................................................................28
Warranty information ..............................................................................................................................................28
Regulatory information ...........................................................................................................................................28
Safety and regulatory compliance ...............................................................................................................28
Belarus Kazakhstan Russia marking...........................................................................................................28
Turkey RoHS material content declaration..................................................................................................29
Ukraine RoHS material content declaration ................................................................................................29
Communications interference.................................................................................................................................29
Acronyms and abbreviations...................................................................................................................31
Documentation feedback ........................................................................................................................33
Index .......................................................................................................................................................34

Overview 5
Overview
About the HPE Dynamic Smart Array B140i RAID
controller
The HPE Dynamic Smart Array B140i RAID controller is a RAID solution combining SATA ports and
proprietary software components. Eliminating most of the hardware RAID controller components, and
relocating advanced RAID algorithms from a hardware-based controller into device driver software lowers
the total solution cost, while still maintaining comparable RAID protection and full compatibility with Smart
Array disk format, configuration utilities, and management/monitoring software.
The Dynamic Smart Array controllers share the same easy and consistent UI with standup Smart Array
controllers, thus making storage management and deployment easier for IT workers.
Features
The B140i controller has the following features:
•RAID 0, 1, 10, 5
•Maximum drives supported—10
•Maximum LUNs supported—10
•Active Health Support
•iLO Management support
•Drive temperature reporting via iLO
•HPE SSA support
•UEFI BIOS
•Smart Carrier support ("Drive LEDs" on page 15)
•Hot-plug and non-hot-plug configurations
•SATA hard drive, SATA SSD, and SATA M.2 drive support
•Work load logging
•SSD Wear Gauge
•SMART
•Drive rebuild
•Online spares
•Predictive spare activation
IMPORTANT: The Dynamic Smart Array B140i Controller supports UEFI Boot Mode only. It
does not support Legacy BIOS Boot Mode.
For more information about product features, specifications, options, configurations, and compatibility,
see the product QuickSpecs on the Hewlett Packard Enterprise website (http://www.hpe.com/info/qs).

Enabling and configuring the controller 6
Enabling and configuring the controller
Boot mode
Use this option to set the boot mode for the system. HPE ProLiant Gen9 servers provide two boot mode
configurations: UEFI Mode and Legacy BIOS Mode. Certain boot options described in this guide require
that you select a specific boot mode.
By default, the boot mode is set to UEFI Mode. The system must boot in UEFI Mode to use the following
options:
•Secure Boot, UEFI Optimized Boot, Generic USB Boot, IPv6 PXE Boot, iSCSI Boot, and Boot from
URL
•Fibre Channel/FCoE Scan Policy
•Embedded User Partition
•BL140i Smart Array SW RAID controller
NOTE:
The boot mode you use must match the operating system installation. If not, changing
the boot mode can impact the ability of the server to boot to the installed operating system.
To select a Boot Mode:
1. From the System Utilities screen, select System Configuration →BIOS/Platform Configuration
(RBSU) →Boot Options →Boot Mode and press the Enter key.
2. Select a setting and press the Enter key:
oUEFI Mode (default)—Configures the system to boot to a UEFI-compatible operating system.
NOTE: Configure the system to use native UEFI graphic drivers when booting to the UEFI
Mode.
oLegacy BIOS Mode—Configures the system to boot to a traditional operating system in Legacy
BIOS compatibility mode.
3. Press the F10 key to save your selection.
4. Reboot the server for the change to take effect.
Enabling the controller
The SATA chipset used by the HPE Dynamic Smart Array B140i RAID controller may be configured as a
SATA AHCI controller, or it may be configured as a B140i controller. On some platforms, SATA AHCI
mode is the default, and the B140i controller may need to be enabled before use.
To enable the B140i controller:
1. Reboot the server.
The server starts up and the HPE ProLiant POST screen appears within a few minutes.
2. Press the F9 key in the ProLiant POST screen. The System Utilities screen appears.
3. From the System Utilities screen, select System Configuration →BIOS/Platform Configuration
(RBSU) →System Options →SATA Controller Options →Embedded SATA Configuration →
Enable HPE Dynamic Smart Array RAID Support, and then press the Enter key.

Enabling and configuring the controller 7
4. Ensure that you are using the correct AHCI or RAID system drivers for your SATA option.
5. Select a setting and press Enter:
a. Enable SATA AHCI Support—Enables the embedded chipset SATA controller for AHCI.
b. Enable HPE Dynamic Smart Array RAID Support—Enables the embedded chipset SATA
controller for Dynamic Smart Array RAID.
6. Press the F10 key to save your selection.
Configuring an array
For the most efficient use of drive space, all drives within an array should have approximately the same
capacity. Each configuration utility treats every physical drive in an array as if it has the same capacity as
the smallest drive in the array. Any excess capacity of a particular drive cannot be used in the array.
Therefore, the capacity is unavailable for data storage.
The more physical drives that are in an array, the greater the probability that the array will experience a
drive failure during any given period. To reduce the risk of data loss that might occur when a drive fails,
configure all logical drives in an array with a suitable fault-tolerance (RAID) method.
To configure an array, use Intelligent Provisioning (on page 24) to enter HPE SSA ("HPE Smart Storage
Administrator" on page 23). For more information about using HPE SSA to configure an array, see the
Smart Storage Administrator User Guide on the Hewlett Packard Enterprise website
(http://www.hpe.com/info/smartstorage/docs).
Setting the controller read cache
HPE Dynamic Smart Array RAID controllers can use a configurable amount of main system memory for
read caching. The default amount of memory used is 64 MB. However, this value can be set to 0, 64, or
128 MB.
Use HPE SSA ("HPE Smart Storage Administrator" on page 23) in offline mode to configure the amount
of read cache. For more information, see the Smart Storage Administrator User Guide on the Hewlett
Packard Enterprise website (http://www.hpe.com/info/smartstorage/docs).

Installing device drivers 8
Installing device drivers
Hewlett Packard Enterprise product QuickSpecs
For more information about product features, specifications, options, configurations, and compatibility,
see the product QuickSpecs on the Hewlett Packard Enterprise website (http://www.hpe.com/info/qs).
Device drivers overview
IMPORTANT: If necessary, enable the controller before installing device drivers. For more
information, see "Enabling the controller."
A device driver is required for the operating system to communicate with the disk drive controller. For
more information on supported operating systems, see the product page for the appropriate controller on
the Hewlett Packard Enterprise website (http://www.hpe.com/info/dynamicsa).
The device drivers are provided with Service Pack for ProLiant (on page 23). Use Intelligent Provisioning
(on page 24) to install the controller drivers.
Driver updates are posted to the Hewlett Packard Enterprise website
(http://www.hpe.com/support/hpesc). When prompted for product information, enter the appropriate
server model name or controller model.
VMware ESX operating systems
To obtain the device drivers you must obtain the Hewlett Packard Enterprise custom image for VMware.
To obtain the custom image, see the Hewlett Packard Enterprise website
(http://www.hpe.com/software/softwaredepot) and select the Virtualization Software/Server
Virtualization category. For more information on supported servers, see the HPE ProLiant Gen9 server
compatibility matrix for HPE Smart Array controllers on the Hewlett Packard Enterprise website
(http://www.hpe.com/info/smartstorage/docs).
You can obtain the device driver for VMware in one of the following two ways:
•By purchasing a VMware license from Hewlett Packard Enterprise. If you purchase a license from
Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the device driver will already be installed. The HPE Dynamic Smart
Array driver (hpdsa) is installed on ESXi custom images by default. For more information and to
obtain the images, see the Hewlett Packard Enterprise website (http://www.hpe.com).
•By installing the device driver as an update (on page 8)
Installing the device driver as an update
1. On the ESXi system console, press the F2 key.
2. Log in as root.
3. Select Troubleshooting Options.
4. Select Enable ESXi Shell, and then Enable SSH.
5. Press the Escape key twice to return to the main screen.
6. Press the Alt-F1 key to log in to the ESXi system console as root.
7. To copy the new hpdsa driver to the target system, enter:

Installing device drivers 9
scp <IP Addr of location with VIB>:<Path to VIB>/<VIB filename> <IP Addr of
ESXi server>:<location>
Example:
scp 10.10.10.20:/scsi-hpdsa-5.0.0.12-1OEM.500.0.0.406165.x86_64.vib
10.10.10.25:/tmp
8. At the esxcli, enter:
esxcli software vib install -v <Full patch to VIB> --force --no-sig-check
--maintenance-mode
Example:
esxcli software vib install -v
/tmp/scsi-hpdsa-5.0.0.12-1OEM.500.0.0.406165.x86_64.vib --force
--no-sig-check --maintenance-mode
If the installation is successful, the following message appears.
9. Reboot the server for the update to take effect.
Installing Linux device drivers
To obtain the following Linux operating systems, use the driver updated diskette (DUD) images located on
the Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP) DVD or the .Hewlett Packard Enterprise website
(http://www.hpe.com/info/hpesc).
•Red Hat Enterprise Linux
•SUSE Linux Enterprise
For Ubuntu disc images, see the Hewlett Packard Enterprise website
(http://downloads.linux.hpe.com/SDR/project/ubuntu-hpdsa/).
Before installing the device drivers, observe the following conditions:
•Be sure you have already created a logical volume using the Intelligent Provisioning software
("Intelligent Provisioning" on page 24) or HPE SSA ("HPE Smart Storage Administrator" on page
23).
•Be sure you have a USB device containing the DUD image.
The readme file provided on the DUD image provides detailed instructions for installing device drivers on
specific versions of the Linux operating system. For general installation instructions, see the following
sections:
•"Installing device drivers (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6) (on page 9)"
•"Installing device drivers (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7)"
•"Installing device drivers (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server)"
•"Installing device drivers (Ubuntu Server Linux)"
Installing device drivers (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6)
To install the device drivers for Red Hat Enterprise Linux:
1. Enable the controller, if necessary.

Installing device drivers 10
2. Reboot the server.
3. Mount the RHEL DVD ISO to iLO virtual media, or insert other installation media.
4. Press the F11 key to manually select the iLO virtual media or other installation media to boot.
5. When the grub entry with a countdown appears, press the ESC key.
6. To edit the grub entry, press the Ekey.
7. Press the Ekey again, and then append blacklist=ahci dd to the kernel boot line as shown
below.
8. Insert the USB device containing the DUD image or mount the driver update diskette as “Virtual
Image File (Removable Media)” in iLO.
9. To boot the modified grub entry, press the Enter key and then press the Bkey.
10. When the driver disk prompt appears, select Yes.
11. Load additional driver disks, if preferred.
12. Continue installing the operating system as normal.
Installing device drivers (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7)
To install the device drivers for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7:
1. Enable the controller, if necessary.
2. Reboot the server.
3. Mount the RHEL 7 DVD ISO to iLO virtual media, or insert other installation media.
4. Press the F11 key to manually select the iLO virtual media or other installation media to boot.
5. Press the Ekey to edit the grub entry, appending modprobe.blacklist=ahci inst.dd as
shown below. This causes the line to wrap. The editor adds the “\” automatically.
6. Insert the USB device containing the DUD image or mount the driver update diskette as “Virtual
Image File (Removable Media)” in iLO.
7. Press Ctrl-X to boot the newly modified grub entry.
The installer presents the driver (hpdsa rpm) for installation.
8. To select the driver update, press the 1key, and then press the Enter key.
9. Press the Ckey to continue.

Installing device drivers 11
Hewlett Packard Enterprise recommends that you remove the USB device or clear the Virtual media
driver check box as soon as the driver update has been extracted.
10. At the language select screen, you can switch to a back terminal to verify the B140i controller logical
volume. Press Ctrl-Alt-F2 to enter the back terminal.
11. At the prompt, enter cat proc/scsi/scsi. You should see model entries for “B140i-Virt” and
“LOGICAL VOLUME,” both indicating the same “host:” (In the following example, the host is scsi3).
12. To return to the installer from the back terminal, press Alt-F6.
13. Continue installing the operating system as normal.
Installing device drivers (SUSE Enterprise Linux)
IMPORTANT: Before installing SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP3, you must mount the Gen9
kISO boot image and then insert the SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP3 DVD when prompted.
To obtain the kISO image, see the SUSE SolidDriver Search website
(
http://drivers.suse.com/hp/HP-ProLiant-Gen9
).
To install the device drivers for SUSE Enterprise Linux:
1. Enable the controller, if necessary.
2. Reboot the server.
3. Mount the SLES DVD ISO to iLO virtual media, or insert other installation media.
4. Press the F11 key to manually select the iLO virtual media or other installation media to boot.
5. To edit the grub entry, press the Ekey.
6. Append broken_modules=ahci driverupdate=1 as shown below.
7. Insert the USB device containing the DUD image or mount the driver update diskette as “Virtual
Image File (Removable Media)” in iLO.
8. Press Ctrl-X to boot the newly modified grub entry.

Installing device drivers 12
9. The hpdsa driver installs automatically. “HP LOGICAL VOLUME” and “HP B140i” should appear in
the “Please choose the Driver Update medium” dialog.
10. To view “insmod hpdsa.ko” in the F3 back terminal, press Alt-F3.
11. To view references to “HP LOGICAL VOLUME” and “HP B140i” in the F4 back terminal, press
Alt-F4.
12. To return to the installation screen, press Alt-F1.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise recommends that you remove the driver update USB device or clear the
Virtual Media device check box at this time.
13. Select Back to continue.
14. Continue installing the operating system as normal.
Installing device drivers (Ubuntu Server Linux)
IMPORTANT:
Ubuntu does not recognize driver update images via iLO virtual media. Use a
USB key with a partition, and then enter the dd command to copy the driver update image to
the USB-key. (
dd if=hpdsa-1.2.0-185.ubuntu1404.x86_64.img of=/dev/sdc1
)
To install the device drivers on Ubuntu Server Linux:
1. Flash a USB key with a Ubuntu Server Linux disk image, using /dev/sdc1 as the example USB
partition:
gunzip hpdsa-1.2.4-140.ubuntu14.04.2.x86_64.img.gz
dd if=hpdsa-1.2.4-140.ubuntu14.04.2.x86_64.img of=/dev/sdc1
2. Enable the Smart Array controller in the BIOS/Platform Configuration (RBSU) screen from the UEFI
System Utilities.
3. Insert the USB key which contains the driver update image (above).
4. Mount the Ubuntu Server DVD ISO image via the iLO virtual media.
5. Reboot the server.
6. Press the F11 key to manually select the iLO virtual media to boot.
7. Boot the installation media.
8. When prompted, select [English].
9. Press the F6 key and then select Expert mode, followed by the ESC key.
10. In the kernel command line, enter “--” and a space then enter the following:
modprobe.blacklist=ahci
11. Press Ctrl-X or F10 to confirm the kernel command line and boot the installation kernel.

Installing device drivers 13
12. Continue the installation. When prompted by the installer to load drivers from internal virtual driver
disks, select Yes.
13. At the "Finish the installation" screen, press Alt-F2 to access a virtual console and issue the
following commands:
a. chroot /target
b. echo "blacklist ahci" > /etc/modprobe.d/install-hpdsa.conf
c. depmod `uname -r`
d. update-initramfs -u
e. exit
14. Press Alt-F1 to return to the Finish screen.
15. Press the Enter key to complete the installation and reboot the server.
16. After complete the installation and reboot the server, and then append DKMS module to the errata
kernel.
#apt-get update
#apt-get install build-essential dkms
#dpkg -i hpdsa-dkms_1.2.4.140d_all.deb
#reboot
Windows operating systems
The device driver for the HPE Dynamic Smart Array B140i RAID controller is not included with the
off-the-shelf Microsoft Windows operating system media. If you are installing the operating system to a
logical volume managed by the B140i controller, then you must ensure that the device driver is installed
so that the Windows installation will recognize the logical volume.
If you install the operating system using the assisted installation option in the Intelligent Provisioning
software ("Intelligent Provisioning" on page 24), the driver is added automatically during installation. No
further action is required.
If you install the operating system without Intelligent Provisioning, you must do one of the following:
•Select the driver from the Virtual Install Disk (VID). This option requires that VID is enabled in System
Utilities.
From the System Utilities screen, select System Configuration → BIOS/Platform Configuration
(RBSU) → System Options → USB Options → Virtual Install Disk. Then, press the Enter key.
•Manually inject the driver during the OS installation from a USB flash drive ("Manually injecting the
device driver during OS installation" on page 13).
•Select Enabled and press the Enter key.
•Press the F10 key to save your selection.
Manually injecting the device driver during OS installation
To manually inject the driver during Windows OS installation:
1. Obtain the drivers and extract them to a USB drive. The drivers for the B140i controller can be
obtained from either the Service Pack for Proliant (on page 23) or from the Hewlett Packard
Enterprise website. (http://www.hpe.com/support/hpesc) The option to extract the files is
presented when running the driver installation component.
2. For installations using a SATA optical drive to load the Windows installation media, Windows
provides an early prompt for the optical device driver in order to continue installation. Insert the USB
drive containing the driver, and then click Browse. This loads the driver for the SATA optical device

Installing device drivers 14
and also automatically loads the driver for the SATA hard drives or SATA SSDs connected to the
B140i controller.
3. For installations that do not use the SATA optical drive to load the Windows installation media, when
the "Where do you want to install Windows?" screen appears, click Load driver, and then point to
the extracted HPE Dynamic Smart Array B140i RAID controller driver folder.

Replacing, moving, or adding hard drives 15
Replacing, moving, or adding hard drives
Drive LEDs
Dynamic Smart Array RAID controllers support drive LED illumination only on systems with backplane
support for drive LEDs.
In addition, Dynamic Smart Array RAID controllers support HPE Smart Carrier LED illumination. However,
LED functionality is provided only if the drives are authenticated through Smart Carrier.
Item
LED
Status
Definition
1
Locate
Solid blue
The drive is being identified by a host application.
Flashing blue
The drive carrier firmware is being updated or requires an
update.
2
Activity ring
Rotating green
Drive activity
Off
No drive activity
3
Do not remove
Solid white
Do not remove the drive. Removing the drive causes one or
more of the logical drives to fail.
Off
Removing the drive does not cause a logical drive to fail.
4
Drive status
Solid green
The drive is a member of one or more logical drives.
Flashing green
The drive is rebuilding or is erasing.
Flashing
amber/green
The drive is a member of one or more logical drives and predicts
the drive will fail.
Flashing amber
The drive is not configured and predicts the drive will fail.
Solid amber
The drive has failed.
Off
The drive is not configured by a RAID controller.
Recognizing drive failure
If any of the following occurs, the drive has failed:
•The drive status LED illuminates amber.
•When failed drives are located inside the server or storage system and the drive LEDs are not
visible, the Health LED on the front of the server or server blade illuminates. This LED also

Replacing, moving, or adding hard drives 16
illuminates when other problems occur such as when a fan fails, a redundant power supply fails, or
the system overheats.
•A POST message lists failed drives when the system is restarted, as long as the controller detects at
least one functional drive.
•HPE SSA lists all failed drives, and represents failed drives with a distinctive icon.
•Systems Insight Manager can detect failed drives remotely across a network. For more information
about Systems Insight Manager, see the documentation on the Insight Management DVD or on the
Hewlett Packard Enterprise website (http://www.hpe.com/info/insightmgmt).
•The System Management Homepage (SMH) indicates that a drive has failed.
•On servers with Windows operating systems, the Event Notification Service posts an event to the
server IML and the Microsoft Windows system event log.
•On servers with Linux operating systems, Linux agents log the event, create an IML entry, and
update /var/log/messages.
For more information about diagnosing drive problems, see ProLiant Gen9 Troubleshooting Guide,
Volume I: Troubleshooting.
CAUTION:
Sometimes, a drive that has previously been failed by the controller may seem to
be operational after the system is power-cycled or (for a hot-
pluggable drive) after the drive has
been removed and reinserted. Howev
er, continued use of such marginal drives may eventually
result in data loss. Replace the marginal drive as soon as possible.
Effects of a hard drive failure
When a hard drive fails, all logical drives that are in the same array are affected. Each logical drive in an
array might be using a different fault-tolerance method. Therefore, each logical drive can be affected
differently.
•RAID 0 configurations cannot tolerate drive failure. If any physical drive in the array fails, all RAID 0
logical drives in the same array also fail.
•RAID 1 configurations can tolerate one drive failure. If one physical drive in a RAID 1 configuration
fails, the RAID volume is still intact as a degraded RAID 1.
•RAID 1+0 configurations can tolerate up to two drive failures as long as no failed drives are mirrored
to one another.
A RAID 1+0 configuration of four drives consists of two RAID 1 volumes of two drives each. One
drive from each RAID 1 volume can fail for a total of two failed drives. If both drives in one RAID 1
volume fail, the entire RAID 1+0 volume fails.
•RAID 5 configurations can tolerate up to one drive failure. Data protection is provided by parity data.
This parity data is calculated stripe by stripe from the user data that is written to all other blocks within
that stripe. The blocks of parity data are distributed evenly over every physical drive within the logical
drive.
Compromised fault tolerance
CAUTION: When fault tolerance is compromised, data loss can occur. However, it may be
possible to recover the data. For more information, see "Recovering from compromised fault
tolerance (on page 17)."
If more drives fail than the fault-tolerance method can manage, fault tolerance is compromised, and the
logical drive fails. If this failure occurs, the operating system rejects all requests and indicates
unrecoverable errors.

Replacing, moving, or adding hard drives 17
For example, fault tolerance may be compromised when a drive in an array fails while another drive in the
array is being rebuilt.
Compromised fault tolerance can also be caused by problems unrelated to drives. In such cases,
replacing the physical drives is not required.
Recovering from compromised fault tolerance
If fault tolerance is compromised, inserting replacement drives does not improve the condition of the
logical volume. Instead, if the screen displays unrecoverable error messages, perform the following
procedure to recover data:
1. Power down the entire system, and then power it back up. In some cases, a marginal drive will work
again for long enough to enable you to make copies of important files. If a 1779 POST message is
displayed, do the following:
a. Press the F2 key and select Device Health Status.
b. Select 1779 from the list of errors.
c. Use the actions on the submenu to re-enable the logical volumes.
Remember that data loss has probably occurred and any data on the logical volume is suspect.
2. Make copies of important data, if possible.
3. Replace any failed drives.
4. After you have replaced the failed drives, fault tolerance may again be compromised. If so, cycle the
power again. If the 1779 POST message is displayed:
a. Press the F2 key and select 1779 from the list of errors. Then, use the actions on the submenu to
re-enable the logical drives.
b. Recreate the partitions.
c. Restore all data from backup.
To minimize the risk of data loss that is caused by compromised fault tolerance, make frequent backups of
all logical volumes.
Replacing hard drives
If you are replacing a drive in a fault-tolerant configuration while the system is powered down, a POST
message appears when the system is powered up. When this message appears, press the F2 key and
select Device Health Status. Then, select the POST message and use the actions on the submenu to
enable automatic data recovery. If you do not enable automatic data recovery, the logical volume remains
in a ready-to-recover condition, and the same POST message appears when the system is restarted.
In RAID 1 configurations, you can replace one failed drive.
In RAID 1+0 configurations, drives are mirrored in pairs. If drives are not mirrored to removed or failed
drives, you can replace them simultaneously.
In RAID 5 configurations, you can replace one failed drive. When a physical drive fails, data that was on
the failed drive can be calculated from the remaining parity data and user data on the other drives in the
array. This recovered data is usually written to an online spare in a process called a rebuild.
Guidelines
Before replacing hard drives, observe the following guidelines:
•Be sure that the array has a current, valid backup.
•Confirm that the replacement drive is a SATA or SATA SSD drive

Replacing, moving, or adding hard drives 18
•Use replacement drives that have a capacity equal to or greater than the smallest drive in the array.
The controller immediately fails drives that have insufficient capacity.
•After removing a drive, wait 3 seconds. After 3 seconds, the firmware generates an event indicating
that the drive has been removed. You can now safely install a new drive.
To replace more drives in an array than the fault tolerance method can support, follow the previous
guidelines for replacing several drives simultaneously. Wait until rebuild is complete, as indicated by HPE
SSA, before replacing additional drives.
If you need to replace more drives than the fault tolerance method can support because fault tolerance
has been compromised, back up the data before replacing any drives. For more information, see
"Recovering from compromised fault tolerance (on page 17)."
Data recovery (rebuild)
When you replace a hard drive in an array, the controller uses the fault-tolerance information on the
remaining drives in the array to reconstruct the data from the original drive and write it to the replacement
drive. This process is called automatic data recovery or rebuild. If fault tolerance is compromised, this
data cannot be reconstructed and, likely, is lost permanently.
Rebuilding an array requires that you either be in offline HPE SSA or booted into the operating system
with the driver installed.
The operating system must be running for the rebuild to occur.
If another drive in the array fails while fault tolerance is unavailable during rebuild, a fatal system error can
occur, and all data on the array is then lost. In exceptional cases, however, failure of another drive does
not always cause a fatal system error. These exceptions include the following:
•Failure after activation of a spare drive
•Failure of a drive that is not mirrored to any other failed drives (in a RAID 1+0 configuration)
Time required for a rebuild
The time required for a rebuild varies, depending on several factors:
•The priority that the rebuild is given over normal I/O operations
Change the priority setting with HPE SSA ("HPE Smart Storage Administrator" on page 23).
•The amount of I/O activity during the rebuild operation
•The rotational speed of the hard drives
•The brand, model, and age of the drives
•The amount of unused capacity on the drives
•In RAID 5 configurations, the time required for a rebuild may be affected by data parity initialization.
Allow approximately 15 minutes per gigabyte for the rebuild process to complete.
System performance is affected during the rebuild, and the system is unprotected against further drive
failure until the rebuild has finished. Therefore, replace drives during periods of low activity, when
possible.
When automatic data recovery has finished, the state of the logical volume is updated in HPE
SSA/SSA-CLI/agents, and an event is posted to the system event log indicating that the rebuild is
complete.
If HPE SSA or the posted event indicates that the rebuild has terminated abnormally, determine the
appropriate course of action. See "Abnormal termination of a rebuild (on page 19)."

Replacing, moving, or adding hard drives 19
Abnormal termination of a rebuild
If the activity LED on the replacement drive permanently ceases to be illuminated even while other drives
in the array are active, the rebuild process has terminated abnormally. The following table indicates the
three possible causes of abnormal termination of a rebuild.
Observation Cause of rebuild termination
None of the drives in the array have an
illuminated amber LED.
One of the drives in the array has
experienced an uncorrectable read error.
The replacement drive has an
illuminated amber LED.
The replacement drive has failed.
One of the other drives in the array
has an illuminated amber LED.
The drive with the illuminated amber LED
has now failed.
Each of these situations requires a different remedial action.
Case 1: An uncorrectable read error has occurred.
1. Back up as much data as possible from the logical drive.
CAUTION: Do not remove the drive that has the media error. Doing so causes the logical
drive to fail.
2. Restore data from backup. Writing data to the location of the unreadable sector often eliminates the
error.
3. Remove and reinsert the replacement drive. This action restarts the rebuild process.
If the rebuild process still terminates abnormally:
1. Delete and recreate the logical drive.
2. Restore data from backup.
Case 2: The replacement drive has failed.
Verify that the replacement drive is of the correct capacity and is a supported model. If these factors are
not the cause of the problem, use a different drive as the replacement.
Case 3: Another drive in the array has failed.
A drive that has recently failed can sometimes be made temporarily operational again by cycling the
server power.
1. Power down the server.
2. Remove the replacement physical drive (the one undergoing a rebuild), and reinstall the drive that it
is replacing.
3. Power up the server.
If the newly failed drive seems to be operational again:
1. Back up any unsaved data.
2. Remove the drive that was originally to be replaced, and reinsert the replacement physical drive. The
rebuild process automatically restarts.
3. When the rebuild process has finished, replace the newly failed drive.
However, if the newly failed drive has not recovered:
1. Remove the drive that was originally to be replaced, and reinsert the replacement physical drive.
2. Replace the newly failed drive.
3. Restore data from backup.

Replacing, moving, or adding hard drives 20
Moving hard drives and arrays
When moving drives, observe the following guidelines:
•You can move drives to other ID positions on the same array controller.
•You can move drives from a B-series controller to a P-series controller.
CAUTION: Back up all data before moving drives from a B-series controller to a host bus
adapter. Otherwise, data will be lost.
•You can move drives from a B-series controller to a host bus adapter. However, any volume
configuration will not be migrated to the new HBA.
•You cannot move drives from a P-series controller to a B-series controller.
Observe the following conditions for moving drives:
•Power down the server.
•If moving the drives to a different server, confirm that the new server has empty bays to
accommodate all the drives simultaneously.
•Confirm that the array has no failed or missing drives.
•Confirm that no spare drive in the array is acting as a replacement for a failed drive.
•If moving the drives to a different server, confirm that the new server has the latest system ROM and
drivers. For more information, see the Hewlett Packard Enterprise website
(http://www.hpe.com/support/hpesc).
Observe the following conditions for moving an array to another controller:
•If the other controller is connected to one or more arrays of configured logical drives, the total
number of logical drives on the controller after the drives have been moved must not exceed the
number of logical drives that the controller supports. This number depends on the controller model
and on the controller firmware version.
•If moving the logical volume to a hardware-based Smart Array controller that is connected to one or
more logical drives, confirm that the total number of logical drives does not exceed the number of
logical drives that the controller supports.
•If moving the logical volume to an controller in another server, remove all physical drives from the
other server.
When all the conditions have been met, move the drives:
1. Back up all data before removing any drives or changing configuration. This step is required if you
are moving data-containing drives from a controller that does not have a cache module.
2. Power down the system.
3. Move the drives.
4. Power up the system.
5. Observe the POST messages:
oIf a 1785 POST message appears, the drive array did not configure properly. Continue with step
6.
oIf a 1724 or 1727 POST message appears, drive positions were changed successfully and the
configuration was updated. Continue with step 7.
6. If the array did not configure properly, do the following:
a. Power down the system immediately to prevent data loss.
b. Return the drives to their original locations.