How to perform diagnostics (stress test) on HP Smartarray Controller

hphp-smart-arraystress-testing

At my office, we have a server that we suspect its RAID controller (HP Smartarray) is failing. A cold boot, however, does not indicate anything.

Can anyone recommend me a method to stress-test the controller?

Symptoms that makes me suspect a failing controller:

  • Disk access getting slower, queue getting longer

  • Running dmesg on the XenServer console I see many messages similar to this one:

    end_request: I/O error, dev tda, sector 253655584

    (the sector number is never the same)

  • When we move the VM to another physical host, we no longer see the above message

  • Running idle (without any running VM), the dmesg no longer emit the above message

A search on Google indicated that the above message is most commonly associated with a failing SmartArray controller.

How can I be sure that the SmartArray controller is failing?

Best Answer

HP Smart Array controllers don't fail often. Typically failure is sudden and not something that degrades over time.

Either way, you can run offline diagnostics on the array by booting the HP SmartStart DVD included with the server and running the HP Array Diagnostics Utility (ADU).

You didn't indicate the model or generation of your server or the RAID controller (those things are helpful), but the linked DVD image should cover most recent HP systems.

As far as running an online stress test, the stress utility is good for that purpose.

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