How to Remove a Disk Drive

Removing a disk drive can allow you to downsize or reallocate your existing storage pool. You might want to perform this procedure in the following scenarios.

• You no longer need to make data accessible to a particular node.

• You want to migrate a portion of your storage to another storage array.

For conceptual information about quorum, quorum devices, global devices, and device IDs, see the Sun Cluster concepts documentation.

Before You Begin

This procedure relies on the following prerequisites and assumptions.

• You do not need to remove the entire storage array.

  If you need to remove the storage array, see How to Remove a Storage Array.

• You do not need to replace the storage array's chassis.

  If you need to replace your storage array's chassis, see How to Replace the Chassis.

• Your nodes are not configured with dynamic reconfiguration functionality.

  If your nodes are configured for dynamic reconfiguration, see the Sun Cluster system administration documentation, and skip steps that instruct you to shut down the node.

This procedure provides the long forms of the Sun Cluster commands. Most commands also have short forms. Except for the forms of the command names, the commands are identical. For a list of the commands and their short forms, see Appendix A, Sun Cluster Object-Oriented Commands, in Sun Cluster 3.1 - 3.2 Hardware Administration Manual for Solaris OS.

To perform this procedure, become superuser or assume a role that provides solaris.cluster.read and solaris.cluster.modify RBAC authorization.

1. Identify the disk drive that you are removing. Also identify the slot that the disk drive needs to be removed from.

   If the disk error message reports the drive problem by device ID, use the cldevice list or scdidadm -l command to determine the Solaris device name. To list all configurable hardware information, use the cfgadm -al command.

   • If you are using Sun Cluster 3.2, use the following commands:

     # cldevice list -v # cfgadm -al

   • If you are using Sun Cluster 3.1, use the following commands:

     # scdidadm -l deviceID # cfgadm -al

2. If the disk you are removing is configured as quorum device, add a new quorum device that will not be affected by this procedure. Then remove the old quorum device.

   To determine whether a quorum device will be affected by this procedure, use one of the following commands.

   • If you are using Sun Cluster 3.2, use the following command:

     # clquorum show +

   • If you are using Sun Cluster 3.1, use the following command:

     # scstat -q

   For procedures about how to add and remove quorum devices, see the Sun Cluster system administration documentation.

3. If possible, back up the metadevice or volume.

   For more information, see your Solaris Volume Manager or Veritas Volume Manager documentation.

4. Perform volume management administration to remove the disk drive from the configuration.

   For more information, see your Solaris Volume Manager or Veritas Volume Manager documentation.

5. On all nodes, unconfigure the disk drive. Remove references to the disk drive from the operating system and clustering environment.

   # cfgadm -c unconfigure cN::dsk/cNtXdY

6. Remove the disk drive.

   For the procedure about how to remove a disk drive, see your storage documentation. For a list of storage documentation, see Related Documentation.

7. On both nodes, delete the paths to the disk drive that you plan to remove.

   # devfsadm -C

8. On all nodes, remove all obsolete device IDs.

   • If you are using Sun Cluster 3.2, use the following command:

     # cldevice clear

   • If you are using Sun Cluster 3.1, use the following command:

     # scdidadm -C