9.6.6 Elimination of False Drive Failures

Disks drives, and flash drives are complex computers that can occasionally appear to fail due to internal software lockups without actually physically failing. In the event of an apparent hard drive failure on X5-2 High Capacity cell or an apparent flash drive failure on X5-2 Extreme Flash cell, Oracle Exadata System Software automatically redirects I/Os to other drives, and then power cycles the drive. If the drive returns to normal status after the power cycle, then it will be re-enabled and resynchronized. If the drive continues to fail after being power cycled, then it will be dropped. This feature allows Oracle Exadata System Software to eliminate false-positive disk failures and therefore helps to preserve data redundancy and reduce management.