Chapter 4. Peripheral Use
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Chapter 4. Peripheral Use

There is no front cover on the four hard disk drive locations. To access or use the CD and floppy drives, you must open or remove the plastic front cover. The following section describes how.

Opening the CD and Floppy Cover

As shown in Figure 4-1, the plastic front cover swings open to the right. Note that there is no fastener to hold the cover closed.

Figure 4-1. Opening the CD and Floppy Front Cover


You can remove the cover using the following information:

  1. Grasp the plastic cover close to the right edge (where the door attaches to the bracket).

  2. Pull outward and downward on the door and the cover detaches from the bracket.

To reinstall the door:

  1. Seat the lower ball in the hole in the bottom of the bracket.

  2. Push the upper ball forward until it snaps into the hole on the top of the bracket.

Hot-swap Drive Use

If your SGI 1200 server has a RAID controller, it is essential to keep the following warnings in mind as you begin using the hot-swap drives.

Caution: NEVER remove a hot-swap drive while the array is being rebuilt. The amber global failure LED on the front panel blinks very slowly while the array rebuilds, so do not remove a drive until the array is finished rebuilding. Never remove more than one hard drive carrier from the SGI 1200 server at a time. All RAID levels fail when more than one hard drive is removed from the chassis. Also, do not operate your SGI 1200 for extended periods without having all drive bays filled with either devices or a filler drive blank.

If your SGI 1200 server does not have a RAID controller, the hot- swap drives function as removable drives only. Data is not protected if a hard drive crash occurs.

Use Figure 4-2 to correlate removable hard drives with their SCSI bay locations .

Figure 4-2. SCSI Drive Numbering  


Remove a hard disk from the system using the following steps and Figure 4-3:

  1. Grasp the middle of the release handle.

  2. Squeeze the middle of the drive handle .

    Note: If you are using an optional RAID controller, you must have the RAID configured properly to remove and replace a hard drive carrier with the power on. Refer to the PCI RAID card's documentation for additional information.

    Figure 4-3. Releasing a Hard Disk Drive


  3. Slide the hard drive out, see Figure 4-4.

    Caution: If you do not have an optional PCI RAID card you will probably lose data on a failed drive. You will need to restore backup data after the failed drive is replaced. Also, allowing 30 seconds for the hard drive to spin down after releasing the drive handle is highly recommended.

    Figure 4-4. Removing a Hard Drive  


  4. Slide a new drive into the drive bay using the drive release handle in a two step motion as shown in Figure 4-5.

    Figure 4-5. Replacing a Hard Disk Drive  


  5. Find the icon on the drive release handle. Push the drive carrier in.

  6. Press the handle toward the chassis, and lock the drive release handle.

Hard Drive Upgrade Strategies

This section provides information about hard drive upgrade strategies for SGI 1200 servers with RAID and non-RAID drives. The SGI 1200 server can be configured with up to four internal hard disk drives.

Note: When upgrading storage, the system must be powered down to install the new drives, regardless of the drive type or RAID controller being used.

Caution: Always perform a full backup before upgrading your SGI 1200 server.

To install internal hard drives perform the following steps:

  1. Back up your system.

  2. Safely shut down the system.

  3. Install the hard drive.

  4. Restart the operating system.

  5. Configure the new device as applicable to your operating system.

The two independent SCSI channels on the motherboard enable a variety of external SCSI connections. Table 4-1 shows that the SGI 1200 server can be connected to Ultra SCSI by way of an optional SCSI connector, and some versions can connect with an Ultra2 connection.

Table 4-1. SGI 1200 Server External SCSI Connection Choices

Internal RAID

No RAID

Ultra2, Ultra SCSI or none

Ultra SCSI or none

Table 4-2 describes some of the internal and external RAID upgrade parameters for the SGI 1200 chassis with midplane and optional RAID controller.

Table 4-2. SGI 1200 RAID Configurations

SGI 1200 Version

Internal RAID

External RAID

4 bay hot-swap hard drives with RAID controller

Yes

Yes

Non-RAID hard drives

No

Yes

For the SGI 1200 with hot-swap hard drives and the optional RAID controller, there are two different methods to install new hard drives into a chassis with existing hard drives already configured for RAID 5. The chassis must have a minimum of three hard drives to support RAID 5 . Both of these methods are summarized as B in Table 4-3. The first method involves the following steps:

  1. Back up your system.

  2. Safely shut down the system.

  3. Install the hard drive.

  4. Configure the new hard drive in a fault tolerant configuration in a second volume .

  5. Start the system.

  6. Configure the drive as a new logical volume.

The second alternative involves the following steps:

  1. Back up your system.

  2. Safely shut down the system.

  3. Install the hard drive.

  4. Format hard drives to erase the old RAID 5 configuration.

  5. Configure all the hard drives in the system as a RAID 5 as a single volume.

  6. Start the system.

  7. Restore your system files on the new drive configuration from backups.

Table 4-3. RAID 5 Hard Drive Upgrade Strategy

Drive Slot Number

 

 

 

 

 

Number of installable hard drives

1

2

3

4

 

Three hard drives + one new in slot 4

R5

R5

R5

 

 


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Chapter 3. Mounting the Server in a Rack  Appendix A. Regulatory Specifications