drive blink on demand?

[Polytropon]

On Mon, 18 Nov 2013 14:09:25 -0800, aurfalien wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've 42 disks across 4 JBODs using LSI HBAs.
> 
> I've been doing dd if=/dev/disk... of=/dev/null and watching
> what rapidly blinks to identify drives.
> 
> However is there a better or at least non janky way to do this?

I've been using a very stupid way:

Usually disks are located in trays. Give each tray a number
or a letter and a color, depending on if you're organizing
them in RAID configurations, such as stripes and mirrors.
Apply labels to the disks according to their code and
function, e. g. red1, red2, red3, blue1, blue2, blue3;
for a striped mirror (or mirrored stripe similarly) with
spare disks: green1a, green2a, green3a, blue1a, blue2b,
blue2b, blue3b (the disks) and red1, red2, red3 (spares).
This makes it easy to identify disks per location. So
whenever the disk labeled yellow4a causes trouble, you
immediately know where to apply a hammer. :-)

Maybe this is an inspiration for a solution, in worst case
as a "how not to do it" if it abolutely fails to meet your
requirements. :-)



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...