Dell PowerEdge: How to Assign a Hard Drive in Global Hot Spare.

Note: This article is part of the Server Tutorials: "RAID and Disks" available in KB article 131039: PowerEdge Tutorials: Physical Disks and RAID Controller (PERC) on Servers .

A global hot spare is an unused backup disk that is part of the disk group. Hot spares remain in standby mode. When a hard drive that is used in a virtual disk fails, the assigned hot spare is activated to replace the failed hard drive without interrupting the system or requiring your intervention. When a hot spare is activated, it rebuilds the data for all redundant virtual disks that were using the failed hard drive.

You can change the hot spare assignment by unassigning a disk and choosing another disk as needed. You can also assign more than one hard drive as a global hot spare.

To assign or unassign a global hot spare for a hard drive, complete the following steps:
Does my controller support this feature? See Supported Features.

Using the iDRAC

1. In the iDRAC Web interface, go to the menu Overview > Storage > Physical Disks > Setup. The Setup Physical Disk page is displayed.
2. From the Controller drop-down menu, select the controller to view the associated hard drives.
3. To assign as a global hot spare, from the drop-down menus in the Action-Assign to All column, select Global Hotspare for one or more hard drives.
4. To unassign a hot spare, from the drop-down menus in the Action-Assign to All column, select Unassign Hotspare for one or more hard drives.
5. From the Apply Operation Mode drop-down menu, select when you want to apply the settings.
6. Click Apply

Using the PERC BIOS Controller

1. Perform the following steps to create global hot spares:
2. Press the down arrow key to select a hard drive to change to a global hot spare.
3. Press <F2> to display the menu of available actions.
4. Press the down arrow key to select Make Global HS and press <Enter>. 

Using OpenManage Server Administrator

1. Select the disk in the Connector (channel or port) table that you want to use as the dedicated hot spare. On some controllers, more than one disk can be selected. The disks that you have selected as dedicated hot spares are displayed in the Disks that are configured as a dedicated hot spare table.
2. Click Apply Changes when ready.

Using the iDRAC9

1. In the iDRAC web interface, go to Configuration > Storage Configuration.
   The Storage Configuration page is displayed
   In iDRAC 5.10.00.00 and later, click the Storage tab.

2. In versions prior to iDRAC 5.10.00.00, From the Controller drop-down menu, select the controller to view the associated hard drives.

3. Click Physical Disk Configuration.
   All the hard drives associated to the controller are displayed.
   In iDRAC 5.10.00.00 and later, click on Physical Disk.

4. To assign as a global hotspare, from the drop-down menus in the Action column, select Assign Global Hotspare for one or more hard drives.

5. To unassign a hot spare, from the drop-down menus in the Action column, select Unassign Hotspare for one or more hard drives.

6. Click Apply Now.
   Depending on your requirement, you can also choose to apply At Next Reboot or At Scheduled Time. The settings are applied based on the selected operation mode.