I have a couple of servers I'm about to decommission and they each have 2 raid 1 drives. I want to take these drives and put them in a DAS but I am told that I will lose the data because the raid controllers will change.
Is it true that even with raid 1, I will lose the data? I expected that I would just be able to plug the drives into the Das and without Raid enabled, see 2 copies of each disc and access the data without any problems.
If it was a proprietary controller, say, an HP and you're going to put them into an HP DAS enclosure, you might be able to....
So how about this, since they're mirrored, stick one in, see if you can import the RAID config. If it works fine, stick the other drive in to rebuild the mirror. If it doesn't well... you've got one more chance :)
With RAID1 it is often implemented as a straight mirror so in most cases you can move from one type of controller to another. It is just a case of configuring them as raid1 on the new controller without clearing the disks. However compatibility is not guarenteed so make sure you have a backup before you try.
It might work. I personally don't bank on it. I'd try it, but I think I'd already be resigned to backup-create new volume-restore.
Often RAID controllers do some funny stuff that is specific to the RAID controller, so moving the disks won't let them be properly seen on another controller. There's always the possibility it could work but really...don't count on it.
Your best bet is to verify your backups are up to date and be ready to spend time restoring.
We have never been able to get this to work - even in the same vendor... HP to HP - much of the time is a failure. Dell to Dell - same
(unless they are the same card)
What we have done however is had huge success adding in DRDB and mounting data to the other system - then just downing one - and the other picks up where it left off in real time.
This is an excellent way to get high availability as well...
Think of DRDB as Raid1 except between machines.
