CallManager Drive Problem

[mwheinz]

I have CCM 3.14b installed on MCS-7835 1266. When I extract drive 1 and attempt to boot the server, I get a non-system disk error, as if I had a non-bootable disk inserted. I have had zero problems loading this box, and we cut over in a week. Any suggestions out there? If I replace the drive it boots fine.

All the software on the box is the latest and greatest from CCO.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Ginger Dillon]

Hello -

This scenario happened to me once when I attempted to fall back to a pre-existing software version and I could not get the server to boot from the mirrored copy in slot 1 - same error you received. It was a Compaq DL380G1 server. Turns out this 'occasionally' occurs and the drive does NOT spin up without a disk also in slot 0. I've copied the procedures we developed at our site for this problem for your review. Since you have an MCS server, which is Compaq-HP, I recommend you contact them as well.

Sincerely,

Ginger

· DO NOT PRESS THE F1 OR F10 KEY. CHECK THE ONLINE STATUS LIGHT ON THE DRIVE BEFORE PRESSING ANY KEYS.

· Make sure the Online light on the recovery drive is illuminated.

a. If the light is not on, plug in the original drive that came out of the empty slot (it is usually the first slot in the drive cage). DO NOT PRESS F1. All drives will spin up – this will take approximately 2 minutes and the lights will flash several times. The Online status light on the drives (single far-left green light) will light, flash and then remain steadily lit on all drives simultaneously before the spin-up process is complete. The Online light will now be lighted on the recovery drive. DO NOT PRESS F1. Unplug the drive that was just put in the empty slot – DO NOT unplug the recovery drive.

b. Press F1 at the prompt F1 or F10.

· The server will boot into NT. If the server does not boot into NT, press ctrl-alt-delete (do not power the server off), the online status light will remain active on the drive and the server will boot into NT.

· Login and verify the server is operational.

· While the server is on and running from the recovery disk, insert a spare disk into the empty slot. DO NOT POWER OFF THE SERVER TO INSTALL THE DRIVE IN THE EMPTY SLOT.

· The server will automatically re-mirror the drives. The time to complete the mirror will be approximately that of step #6.

· The server will be back to its original state once the lights on the OS drives stop flashing and you can try to re-install the software or wait for a later time. If you reinstall now, please begin at step #3.

· The remirror process can also be monitored with the Compaq Array Controller Utility software.

[mwheinz]

So, essentially, I should extract the drive, with the server on, do my upgrade, then re-insert the drive hot and let the server re-build the mirror. This is different. On the MCS-7835-1000, you can pull a drive and boot the box from one drive for upgrades.

Is there a Cisco supported fix for the MCS-7835 1266 that you are aware of?

[Ginger Dillon]

Hello again -

I think you may have misunderstood my description of the problem I was having. This was the one and only time I experienced a problem booting a server with the mirrored drive in slot 1 (no drive in slot 0) for fallback recovery. On all other occasions, I have been able to reboot a server successfully with only the drive in slot 1in. The steps I sent you were only to recover from a drive not spinning up.

Any time you are preparing for an upgrade, I would recommend you shutdown the server, then break the mirror by pulling the drive in slot 1. After that is done, power on the server. The server will go into recovery mode, reply F2 to fail the drive you've pulled out, then reply F1 to continue. At that point, you are only running on the drive in slot 0. When upgrading a server using this method, we typically run on just the one drive for a few days to a week to ensure we do not need to fall back. Once we're sure the upgrade is OK, we push the drive in slot 1 back in. Compaq Array Configuration utility will recognize the drive and begin copying the data from the disk in slot 0 back. Nothing else you need to do. Hope this additional information helps!

Sincerely, Ginger