RE: DASD swap on 810?

A couple things. The 140GB Disk units will be the only ones SOLD after a
while. ALL current disk units will be supported for some time.

Most recommend an unload/reload and that's likely not bad advice except
that unless you're on V5R4 you lose all your spooled files and the
contents of any other queueues. The SAVSTG option will work past this but
even IBM doesn't really like SAVSTG.

What I often do for customers is bring over an 'expansion unit' (I put
that in quotes because it's not IBM official - it's a couple disk cages in
an old PC tower. Clearly the same thing can be done with an official IBM
tower though :-) ) The process is this. 0) SAVE 21. 1) Connect the
additional disk can to your current RAID card - it certainly has one
additional port available. 2) Load up the new disk units in there and
start RAID on them. 3) Add all but one of them to your system ASP. 4)
Remove all your currend disks except the load source from the system ASP
(i5/OS moves all the date for you in this step) , 5) copy the load source
disk to the one additional new disk. 6) Shut down the system. 7) Pull the
old disks and put the new ones in their place. Remove the temporary disk
cage. 8) IPL to your new larger system. This will be the fastest method
by some margin and has the additional benefit of no loss of queue data or
spooled files and it also keeps all disks protected at all times.

- Larry


Larry Bolhuis IBM Certified Advanced Technical Expert -
System i Solutions


If you can read this, thank a teacher....and since it's in English,
thank a soldier.





"Ingvaldson, Scott" <scott.ingvaldson@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
07/02/2008 02:58 PM
Please respond to
Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>


To
"Midrange Systems Technical Discussion" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
cc

Subject
RE: DASD swap on 810?






I'll second that. If you are not HA but believe that you're 24x7x365
you need to have a scheduled maintenance window (I'd say at least
quarterly) or you will soon be SOL.

A couple pieces of advice.

1.) I heard at a roadshow that the only SCSI DASD that will
be
supported in the near future will be the 140 GB drives. I wouldn't be
buying anything else at this point.

2.) If you are truly 24x7x365 you don't want to break your
RAID set
and install drives one at a time. Preferably just do an Option 21 save
and restore the whole thing back to a nice set of 4 140s. That should
give you the capacity to spare for a long time and would probably be
fastest and safest option. If cheap is your goal regardless of
performance, save off your largest libraries or a nice group, then
delete those libraries, add in two 140s, balance and restore.

Regards,

Scott Ingvaldson
Senior IBM Support Specialist
Fiserv Midwest


We are in the high 80% range, and I am exploring options to replace the
current drives in our 9406/810. Currently, all 6 slots are occupied with
35GB (model 4326) disk units, under RAID parity protection. I'd like to
replace them with 70GB units.

I know we can break the RAID, offload a drive, and remove for a larger
unit. Can this be done while the system is active (i.e. not restricted
state or DST)? We've done concurrent maintenance for drive replacements,
but am unsure for this type of swap. Obviously we would do a full system
save before and after this operation.


How is the load source handled in this scenario?

Since we have so little free space, we would need to swap one drive,
then another. The third round we should be able to swap two drives, then
two more.



Advice and RTMs appreciated.

Loyd Goodbar
Business Systems
BorgWarner Shared Services
662-473-5713

.