Re: Load source question (RE: Disk Upgrade)

["Charles Wilt" <charles.wilt@xxxxxxxxx>]

Sue,

Your statement contradicts the statement made by Larry Bolhuis in June 2008,
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200806/msg00610.html

"There is one HUGE no-no when it comes to failed Load Source in a RAID
environment: DO NOT stop the operating system until the drive is
replaced. Unless is has been fixed with newer RAID cards, (Which I
simply don't have the guts to try...) the system cannot IPL from a dead
load source drive even though it's RAID protected. Thus it is extremely
important to replace and rebuild that drive with all available alacrity!"

What models/RAID controllers support the IPL of the box with a failed, but
RAIDed, load source?

I remember my first model 400.  We had a mirrored pair for the load source
and then a RAID set for the rest.

However, with my next box, a 270, we just had the RAID array.

If the load source is striped like any other data, why do we care what disk
it is on?

Charles



On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 1:23 PM, Sue Baker <smbaker@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>  wrote on Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:13:27 GMT:
>
> > What is up with the "load source" disk anyway?
>
> The load source disk contains the "boot record" which loads LIC
> and OS. Without it, i5/OS won't come up.
>
> > With RAID 5 and
> > other disk striping technologies, how is one disk more
> > significant?
>
> This is unique to SCSI disk technology.  A boot device (disk,
> tape, and/or CD-DVD) must be on a specific SCSI port and using
> one of a limited number of SCSI device addresses.
>
> > So if the load source disk in a RAID
> > array were to fail, would the machine not IPL?
>
> If the load source disk fails when it is RAID5 or RAID6
> protected, the parity data will be used to enable the machine to
> IPL.
>
> --
> Sue
> Americas Technical Sales Support - Power Systems IBM i
> Rochester, MN
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