Windows 2008 Server Drobo 5D attached to USB 3.0 port. Drobo Shared on our Domain and used to hold all our users My Documents files. All Active directory users have a policy that redirects there MY DOCUMENTS to the shared Drobo Drive. (Home drive)
I get a call at 4am that no one can access their files. I remote into the server and Drobo is not detected. I remotely reboot the server and after it reboots… nothing Drobo is not detected. I get up and drive to the office to see what is going on.
I get into the office and The power light is on green on the drobo but none of the drives have a light next to them. So I powered off the drobo (Because I couldn’t reset it via the dashboard because it wasn’t detected). So after it went through its shutting down (5 minutes later) it powered off. I waited a few seconds powered the drobo back on and it went into its light display process. After a few minutes the drobo popped up on the server and I started to get Alerts.
1st alert:
Red Alert. Drobo detected a hard drive failure. Replace the hard drive indicated by the blinking red light.
So I go get a replacement drive and when I am going to replace it I go to the dashboard to shut down the drobo and I get another alert
2nd alert:
Data Protection is in progress. You may continue using your data, but please do not remove any hard drives with blinking yellow/green lights.
3rd alert:
Degraded win not extra drives, do not remove any drive.
So now my entire staff is waiting for the solution. I tell them to restart there computes and re-log in to the domain and now the shared drobo shows (They can see My Documents) but they have to access to change/save/make changes to there files/folders. They can open and view but once they try to save they get "Access denied. That they don’t have the correct rights/permissions… " I go check the folders and they have the correct permissions/rights to there folders/files. I even tried to take ownership of the folder/file then give the specific user Ownerhip and Full control and it to NOT inherit permissions and even after logging off and back on they get the same message about Access denied. that they don’t have the correct permissions. Weird thing is that its only happening on the Drobo drives. Because I moved one users folder to the local HD on the server and gave the same permission right as it was on the drobo and they can save and everything else. When I put that same folder with the SAME permissions on the Drobo then they can view/open but they cannot save. Can that be because of the Protection Progress??
And my second question is. When can I replace that faulty drive if the alert says to not remove any drives because protection is in progress and when I checked how long the it will be for the protection to complete it says 16 HRS. My users can’t wait 16HRS.
So your Drobo got stuck while a drive failed… that should not happen.
The important thing is: drobo ist back up after restart.
The permission thing sounds a bit strange but that could be an issue with drobo/windows mounting the data read only. I would investigate this issue before messing around with the failed drive because is could possibly be only a minor issue.
Check if your windows server accidentally mounted the drobo readonly and restart your windows server to hopefully fix this. The failed drive should have nothing to do with your readonly problem.
The sequence of the alerts sounds legit:
If you have a single drive marked red and the rest is happily flashing green / yellow: feel free to pull the red flagged drive and insert the new one. Be careful not to put any strain on the backplane of the drobo. If you by chance plan to restart the drobo: this would be the perfect moment to change the drive.
The last alert
simply tells you that you must not remove any ok/working drive (I think even after rebuilding) because your drobo is low on capacity.
In a perfectly working condition you would be able to pull a drive of your choice and replace it with another one. This alert simply tells you that this is a bad idea in it’s current state.
If drobo is rebuilding and a single drive bay shows the flashing red light: this drive is no longer in use and all further alerts do not mean to ask you to leave this drive in the drobo.[hr]
You do not have to wait for protection to finish. Replace the drive and drobo should add the new drive to the disk pack within minutes. If the drive is added to the disk pack drobo will immediately start including this drive in the rebuild/protect process.[hr]
Do not remove any non-failed drives in the “Degraded with no extra drives” state - in this state you are no longer fault-tolerant.
Another (working) drive loss/removal will take the disk pack offline with “Too many drives removed” - otherwise you will have data loss.
(usually i’d wait for your current “mission critical” situation to be over ozzie, before asking a related question - but an important thought comes to mind)…
@bhiga & jemi,
if you had a degraded state, (and) happened to remove a working drive by mistake…
surely it should let you reinstert back in and not lose data?
[quote=“Paul, post:6, topic:139600”]@bhiga & jemi,
if you had a degraded state, (and) happened to remove a working drive by mistake…
surely it should let you reinstert back in and not lose data?
[/quote]
Drobo should go all bays blinking-red and stop everything it’s doing.
If all it’s doing is rebuilding, shouldn’t be a problem and things will continue once necessary drive(s) are reinserted.
But, if you’re doing something on the connected system, it may not gracefully recover from having the rug pulled out from under it.
So be careful. Not something to do in the dark, drunk, etc.
