A little story of failed raid5 (3ware 8000 series)

[Scott Long]

Feargal Reilly wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Aug 2007 08:57:22 +0400
> "Artem Kuchin" <matrix at itlegion.ru> wrote:
> 
>> Um.. it is because i did not have a map of hot swap baskets to
>> conroller ports and i needed to check every driver basket to
>> understand which port it sits on. I have no choise, i think.
>>
> 
> I'm just going to highlight the importance of knowing which
> physical disk is which on your system.
> 
> About a year ago I had to replace a hot-swappable disk from an
> array, but then realised I had no idea which physical disk it
> was as the map of the disks was rather helpfully *inside* the
> case. Due to the physical setup, I had no way or removing the
> cover without first powering down the server - which defeated
> the whole point of paying extra for hot-swap disks.  
> 
> So yeah, be sure to label your disk bays, but be sure to put
> those labels somewhere *useful*.
> 
> -fr.
> 

Most controllers have a function to "blink LED" so you can discover
the mapping.  Just about every management app that I know of does (yes,
they do exist for FreeBSD from many vendors!), and many also have the
feature in their BIOS.

Scott