A virtualization host utilizes a hardware RAID 6 array consisting of six enterprise SAS hard drives storing critical virtual machine disks. The RAID management controller issues an urgent alert indicating that Drive 1 has failed completely and dropped offline, while Drive 3 is experiencing a high rate of reallocated sectors and S.M.A.R.T. predictive failure warnings. The array status is currently listed as DEGRADED. Which TWO of the following actions should the administrator take to safely restore full redundancy to the storage system while minimizing data loss risk?
- Immediately perform a full system backup of the virtual machine storage volume to an external target.Answer
- Replace the failed Drive 1 with an identical hot-swap replacement drive and initiate the array rebuild process.Answer
- CForce Drive 3 offline alongside Drive 1 and replace both drives simultaneously before initiating a single rebuild cycle.
- DDelete the degraded array virtual disk, reformat the remaining functional drives, and recreate a fresh RAID 5 storage pool.
Answer
The administrator should immediately perform a full backup of the storage volume to an external target and replace the offline Drive 1 with a new hot-swap drive to begin rebuilding the array redundancy.
In a degraded RAID 6 environment with one hard failed disk and another disk reporting predictive S.M.A.R.T. failure, the immediate priority is backing up all volume data to protect against catastrophic loss during rebuild strain, followed by replacing the offline drive to initiate a rebuild. RAID 6 can sustain two drive failures, but rebuild operations increase drive stress significantly.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
Handling degraded hardware RAID 6 arrays with combined disk failures and predictive S.M.A.R.T. warnings.