On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 6:36 PM, <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote: > John R Pierce wrote: >> On 10/11/11 12:11 AM, Arun Khan wrote: >>> In rack mount chassis, do the cages that house the >>> hard disks have the following feature? >>> >>> (a) Indicate disk failure. LED lights up and/or audio alarm? >> >> that requires specific configuration to suit whatever drive interconnect >> you have. > > Sometimes, it's just looking at what drive is showing SMART (or other) > errors. Other times, look at the light. Agree but it requires me to be in physical proximity of the system. My objective is to make the "HDD failure recovery" process as deterministic as possible. As stated in another response, this will be an appliance running 24x7 at sites where Linux admin knowledge is likely to be sparse and some sites may not give me connectivity over the 'Net. >> >>> (b) The failed HDD can be swapped. >> >> If they are in hotswap bays, yes. if they aren't, no. > > Don't waste time and money getting anything *other* than hot swap bays. > You really, really don't want to have to pull the server out, and take it > apart just to swap a bad drive. OK, I have understood the value of hot swap bays for disk failure scenario. Thanks, -- Arun Khan