Hot Swap

Can we Hot Swap a drive when the Database is UP and running?

Database is in Archivelog mode

If so how can we hot swap a drive which is mirrored what steps we need to follow

Thanks,

Quote:

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Originally posted by sanga
Can we Hot Swap a drive when the Database is UP and running?

Database is in Archivelog mode

If so how can we hot swap a drive which is mirrored what steps we need to follow

Thanks,

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On a protected device, sure. If your device is RAID 1, 0+1, or 5, you can replace disks on the fly with no problem. The steps vary according to your OS and volume manager software, but in general they are:
1. pull out old disk
2. put in new disk
3. tell your volume manager to resync the disk.

If you have hot spares defined, things will be a little different because you essentially have to do the whole process twice.

Hi marist,

Thanks for the reply

This is what happened a few days ago.

One of our unix Guy Hot swapped a drive and we started experiencing problems like corruption in the database.

Iam sure the disks are mirrored, but one of the database had datafiles on the same volumne and was down and was not affected, but all the datafiles, control files got corrupted and we had to perform PIT database recovery on all databases on that volume, except for the one in which was down.

Do we need to take any precaution in future when we hot swap a drive at the database end so that is does not occur again

We are using Solaris and Veritas volume manager

Thanks again

Are you saying that all other filesystems had corrupt files except for the filesystem that had a bad disk?

No the one which had a Bad disk had corruption

Hmmm. Never saw that with Veritas and Solaris. Maybe your disks are RAID 0?

Can we put the tablespace in Backup mode,Hot swap and put the tablespace in Normal mode would that be helpfull

Thanks

Quote:

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Originally posted by sanga
Can we put the tablespace in Backup mode,Hot swap and put the tablespace in Normal mode would that be helpfull

Thanks

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Why would that help?

Iam not sure Just a thought crossed my mind

Thanks

That was a wrong thought that crossed your mind.;)

If you were on 9i you could suspend I/O while you swapped your disks. However, I think the underlying problem lies in the way your filesystems are setup.

Sanga,

Did you test the "hot swapping a disk" when the system was running?
Never trust soalris and veritas until you test it yourself.

Hi Guys,

Just that there were so many things which went wrong It has been a lot of thinking process for the last couple of days.

The Unix Guy did not not inform us about the Hot Swap as he is in a different team. Iam sure you will be surprised that he is in a different team and this was on a Production Box so he directly tested on it.

We never got a chance to react but as our veritas backups were intact we were able to recover all four databases on that filesystem

We are 8.1.7

As Jeff said it totally depends on how the filesystem is Set Up.
Jeff can you please give us more insight on suspending I/O on 9i.

Everything ended fine with a downtime of half a day which was acceptable to the management due to the circumstances

Thanks for all your replies

Hi Jeff,

I found a Note in metalink

Note:91059.1

Thanks,