Dell Poweredge 2970, 2 Logical drives failed.

We have a Dell poweredge 2970 with 4 drives. Someone claimed to have shutdown the server and no one mention of any hardware changes. But when we tried to start we have a Memory error saying is not optimal and also 2 logical drives failed and the server is no more booting.

From serverfault Sysad

• ...so? How can we help you?

  Sysad : Right now we just cannot boot, is there any way we can fix the raid and boot with the working drives or is there any troubleshoot guides you can recommend, please. Restoration is not the best option for now, we want to be able to fix the server with the existing drives or at least boot with the working drives.

  Massimo : It depends on your RAID configuration. If you have a RAID 5 array and two drives failed, you're in Big Troubles. The same applies if you have two RAID 1 arrays and two drives failes on the same one.

  Sysad : We want to verify if the drives are still OK but if we put them on another server, it asks us if we want to import foreign configuration. What would be the consequences if we say yes and go ahead? Massimo, what level of trouble can you clarify please. We need to what's possible and not possible in that state. Thanks.

  Massimo : This reads the configuration from the drives and try to create matching arrays in the controller configuration; it should *not* affect the drives in any way, so it *should* be a safe bet... but I'd anyway be *really* careful in doing anything at all with those drives.

  Bryan : @Massimo: "If you have a RAID 5 array and two drives failed, you're in Big Troubles" - I think you are confusing logical and physical disks. The OP does state they are logical drives that have failed. No reference to physical disks is made. In fact the details in the OP's question to me implies that there are no failed physical disks at all.

  Massimo : @Brian: how could logical drives have failed if physical disks are ok?

  Bryan : @Massimo, Because the RAID controller may have lost its configuration, so the physical disks are fine, but the logical disks are lost. Correcting the RAID controllers configuration will make the logical disks appear again.
  From Massimo

• It might possibly be that the RAID controller battery is dead, and the configuration has been lost. Some poweredge systems I've worked with in the can reload the configuration from disk when that happens, but I've not seen that option for some time.

  Firstly, you need to be prepared to rebuild the system from your backups.

  Is the server covered by a warranty? If so, you should call Dell before you do anything.

  Do you have any physical disk failures? Does the physical disk configuration look right?

  Bear in mind when looking at the RAID controller configuration, one incorrect keypress could potentially ruin any chance you have of booting the system again.

  splattne : +1 for "one incorrect keypress could potentially ruin any chance you have of booting the system again."
  From Bryan

• Call Dell support, explain the situation. If this is a raid-5, a re-tag might work, they'll also take care of the memory issue - those are fairly easy to handle.

  From dyasny