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Alright, following setup:

  • 2 identical machines (DELL Power Edge T320) with a hardware raid.
  • one machine is running for a while now, one machine hasn't even been set up at all
  • The running machine has a RAID 0+1. 4 disks (4TB each) in total all together

The task:

  • cloning the running machine with everything on there and everything like it is configured on the second machine. They will be used at two different locations but need exactly the same system and data to start from. The state, the running system is in should be used as this desired state and we want to have the complete system on the second machine as well.

The idea:

  • checking the raid to be syncronized on machine 1
  • once it's syncronized, exchanging two hard drives (e.g. 1 and 3) with two empty ones
  • waiting until they are syncronized again
  • exchanging another two harddrives (e.g. 0 and 2) with another two empty ones
  • waiting until they are syncronized again
  • putting the 4 original harddrives back in machine 1
  • putting the 4 copied (via RAID) harddrives in machine 2 and have a cloned copy of machine 1 on machine 2

That would you say to such idea? Thanks!

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4
  • I might work, If you keep your system down att al time during synchronisation.
    – Archemar
    Aug 8, 2014 at 7:34
  • yes, we already were expecting and planning so :)
    – Preexo
    Aug 8, 2014 at 7:58
  • @Archemar The system doesn't need to be down during synchronization. If the disks are hotswappable, then this can be done with zero downtime.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Aug 9, 2014 at 19:31
  • @Gilles Yes, i was concerned about the two sets of removed disk.
    – Archemar
    Aug 10, 2014 at 6:53

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

Start situation

A1+A2+A3+A4.

after first permutation

B1+A2+B3+A4

disk A1 and A3 have data at stage 1

after second permutation

B1+B2+B3+B4

disk A2 and A4 have data at stage 2

putting together A1+A2+A3+A4 gives data at stage 1 and 2, the only way that those data are sync is to have the OS down and let hardware raid do the sync.

This might be a problem if you system is in production.

You might want to:

  1. shutdown OS #1
  2. Pull and replace disque A1 and A3
  3. Verify system #1 work
  4. on the new system install A1 and A3 (without A2 and A4)
  5. run system #2 and add new disk (and let raid do the sync)
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4
  • 1
    we already expected to have to put down the os for this whole process... so it actually is not such a stupid idea, you would say: go ahead? anything that can go stupidly wrong though, anything we have to remember apart from having the OS shut down? Thank you for for opinion on this!
    – Preexo
    Aug 8, 2014 at 7:57
  • I ad a step (verify system #1 work), be prepare to handle dupplicate IP, this might work. we are interrested in result.
    – Archemar
    Aug 8, 2014 at 8:05
  • Thanks, yeah so I'll accept this as a an answer! I'll keep you posted on the results :)
    – Preexo
    Aug 8, 2014 at 8:53
  • it's already a while ago, but it actually worked like a charme, just fyi :)
    – Preexo
    Nov 26, 2014 at 10:41

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