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8 Posts
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2348
July 15th, 2020 01:00
How to tell if I can hot swap a drive on R415?
Hello!
How can I check if my Dell PowerEdge R415 can me hot-swapped? Are all of them hot-swappable or it depends on the configuration? I have a service tag if that helps: .
Thanks
DellEMCSupport
631 Posts
0
July 15th, 2020 09:00
Hello,
If you have drives that are accessible externally, then they would be running through a backplane. I bring this up because if you have a configuration with a backplane, the drives are capable of live replacement. Let me know if you have additional questions.
patj
8 Posts
0
July 21st, 2020 01:00
Well, yes, I can take out hard drives from the front by pushing a button. Does that mean it's capable of live replacement? I didn't install the R415 and I dont really know how was it setted up. Is there other way find out? I can't turn it down as it's need to be constantly running.
DellEMCSupport
631 Posts
0
July 21st, 2020 08:00
One additional thought - before you swap the drive, live or not, I would recommend reviewing your RAID config. For example, it wouldn't be a good idea to pull a predicted fail drive from a RAID 0 without capturing a file level backup, first.
DellEMCSupport
631 Posts
0
July 21st, 2020 08:00
If the server has a backplane, it is capable of drive replacement without downing the server. It's not a matter of software configuration, it's a hardware enabled feature, even the onboard software controllers should support live replacement. The piece that matters is the backplane.
If you'd like to take an extra bit of caution, you can install OMSA - OpenManage Server Administrator (provided you have a supported OS). From there, you can use software to offline the drive (a failed drive is already offline) which would remove the drive from the active array. The drive would then be removed and replaced. The replacement should rebuild automatically, but you can confirm this in OMSA. If it doesn't begin rebuilding automatically, I would recommend marking the drive as a hotspare.
Linked below is the spec sheet for the R415. The options for storage are "cabled or hot-plug." You do not have a cabled drive configuration or the drives would not be connected to a backplane.
https://dell.to/30z5GWV