Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT

> Learn more

> Add to your calendar 

Newsroom Update

Beginning in May, a special Today at Apple series titled “Made for Business” will offer small business owners and entrepreneurs free opportunities to learn how Apple products and services can support their growth and success. Learn more >

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

User profile for user: digitalrhino
digitalrhino Author
User level: Level 1
144 points

Easy Question

I have 5 Xserve RAID arrays populated in 3 Xserve RAIDS. Two of them are stand alone volumes, two of them are striped together, and one is doing nothing right now. Some ******* (surprisingly not me) took off the labels i had on the outside saying which physical array was which. How do I find this out so that i can relabel them? I feel like this should be easy and I am missing the obvious answer.

Posted on Oct 6, 2009 6:44 PM

Reply
13 replies
User profile for user: Antonio Rocco
Antonio Rocco
User level: Level 6
12,278 points

Oct 7, 2009 11:32 AM in response to digitalrhino

Hi Carl

I'm sorry you found my 'advice' not helpful. Your sarcasm was not necessary however. I posted because I thought I could help as we do all on these boards. You stated:

+"I feel like this should be easy and I am missing the obvious answer?"+

I thought my response was in keeping with this? Sometimes a small nudge is all it takes for the penny to drop. For lack of further information is it safe to assume you have three RAIDS attached to three separate hosts? If that's your environment does each host have a monitor, keyboard and mouse attached? If they do launch RAID Admin on each one in turn as well as launching Disk Utility.

From there it should be straightforward?

If they are all headless servers can you VNC/Remote into them? If you launch RAID Admin as well as Disk Utility and again it should be fairly straightforward from thereon.

Yet another alternative is installing RAID Admin on a client mac and using it to connect to each RAID and inspecting the arrays from there. This assumes you know the IP address of each RAID. What you wont necessarily know is which RAID has been striped. You could try simply inspecting the RAIDS as they appear on the desktop of each host as well as using information culled from RAID Admin. Hopefully from there you should be able to figure out which one is which?

Tony
Reply
User profile for user: digitalrhino
digitalrhino Author
User level: Level 1
144 points

Oct 7, 2009 1:03 PM in response to Antonio Rocco

Oh I'm sorry Tony, I guess I somehow took your answer of "Use RAID Admin" as probably being sarcastic and snarky and not an actual attempt at assistance. Not sure how I could possibly have misinterpreted it as such.

The problem i am having is that all three are plugged into one host, and I am not seeing any obvious way to connect the info in RAID admin with the info in Disk Utility.

For instance in disk utility the arrays are identified as disk5s2 or disk3s2 and so on whereas in RAID Admin they are presented as Array 1 or Array 2 of an Xserve RAID named RAID1 or RAID2 or RAID3.

So, is disk5s2 located in RAID1 array 1? Or is it array2? Is it not in RAID1 at all but in RAID2? How can you tell? I can turn on service ID lights to identify which physical Xserve RAID is RAID1 or RAID2 and so on, but I don't see any way to tell me which of these physical chunks of disks is the volume on the desktop called PRODUCTION which resides on disk2s3.

Any thoughts?
Reply
User profile for user: MrHoffman
MrHoffman
Community+ 2024
User level: Level 10
116,907 points

Oct 7, 2009 2:34 PM in response to digitalrhino

From the [RAID Admin 1.2 manual|http://images.apple.com/server/docs/RAIDAdmin1.2_121406.pdf]...

+Turning the System Identifier On or Off+
+You can use RAID Admin to turn on the system identifier light should you want to locate a particular Xserve RAID system or assist another administrator in finding that system. You can also turn off the system identifier when it’s on.+
+To turn the system identifier on or off:+
+Choose System > Turn Service ID On or Turn Service ID Off. If necessary, enter the management password and click OK.+

I don't have the download address for the RAID Admin tool download handy. Probably hanging off of [http://support.apple.com/downloads/|http://support.apple.com/downloads> somewhere.
Reply
User profile for user: Tod Kuykendall
Tod Kuykendall
User level: Level 4
2,270 points

Oct 7, 2009 6:44 PM in response to digitalrhino

+but that doesn't tell me which physical array corresponds to which volume.+

Use RAID Admin.

But seriously folks, RAID Admin will tell you what each disk is the RAID is doing. If you have software RAIDs on the servers after that then you will need to investigate that level as well. eg The RAID may have 2 RAID 5 but they can be a RAID 0 (5+0 final result) on the server.

RAID Box, RAID sides, disk groupings, software RAID are the levels of you'll need to dig through to determine what your entire mapping looks like. It might be much more simple than that or not depending on who set it up. Then document they set-up and get on with your life.

HTH,
=Tod
Reply
User profile for user: Tod Kuykendall
Tod Kuykendall
User level: Level 4
2,270 points

Oct 8, 2009 8:38 AM in response to Tod Kuykendall

A follow-up: After I posted I realized I forgot to mention the fibre switch side of things.

If you're not using a switch (or switches) then your job is pretty easy because your machines will be physically wired to the RAIDs they access. If everything flows into a switch you'll also need to check for zoning and/or LUN masking to see which machine can see which RAID volume and/or partitions on that RAID volume.

LUN masking is only available on RAID Admins version 1.5 and lower and they are not visible or available on v1.5.1. Zoning information would probably have to come from the switch itself.

Without knowing anything about your set-up this general advice is all anyone can offer. Good luck,
=Tod
Reply
User profile for user: digitalrhino
digitalrhino Author
User level: Level 1
144 points

Oct 8, 2009 11:27 PM in response to Tod Kuykendall

These are 3 xserve RAIDS all going to a switch then going to one xserve.

Not to sound like a broken record but I am still not seeing where in RAID Admin it tells you how the array is being presented to the host ie disk5s2 and such. I can see which array is on which physical xserve RAID but not what name or how it would display in Disk Utility. All that is in RAID admin is RAID1, 2 or 3 (the asigned name for the chassis) contains 1 or 2 arrays and what size and health they are. Unfortunately since they are 5 4TB raid 5s that information doesn't tell me very much. I see 5 4TB arrays in RAID Admin and 5 4TB arrays in Disk Utility. The question remains: which is which?
Reply
User profile for user: Tod Kuykendall
Tod Kuykendall
User level: Level 4
2,270 points

Oct 9, 2009 10:06 AM in response to digitalrhino

It's never come up for me but it seems it would simply be a matter of checking the Node World Wide Name in System Profiler under the Fibre Channel against the NWWN in RAID Admin. Even if it routes through a switch the NWWN should transmit through like a MAC address for the fibre.

That would tell you which side of which RAID was mounted as what volumes and at what mount point under the fibre SCSI informaiton. It should also (I believe) have the BSD disk name in System Profiler which you could take back to Disk Utility if that's what you need.

If that doesn't work for you I may be out of ideas.

Good luck,
=Tod
Reply

Easy Question

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.
Learn more Sign up