How do I clone a RAID array between systems?

paidbythehour · 04-01-2009, 02:13 PM

Hey guys / gals, I need a hand ...

I have three identical Dell Precision T3400's, with the exact same hardware configuration. All three systems are running the same OS and are running identical RAID arrays. Here are the details:

OS: RHEL 5
Kernel: 2.6.18-8.el5
RAID: raid0 w/ four 500G disks

I gave one of these systems to another department, and they customized the OS to their liking. Now I've been asked to clone this system to the other T3400's, but I'm not quite sure how to do this with the array's.

I've found man pages regarding backing up an array to disk or tape, but because of the total size (2TB's) I'd rather do this directly between systems. I guess I could rsync the directories, but I'm not sure if there are things I should exclude (/proc, /sys, /boot, etc.)

Does anyone have a lead on this? Even if you have a link discussing this topic, it would be appreciated. I haven't been able to google very much on the subject.

Thanks!

paidbythehour · 04-07-2009, 09:02 AM

No other ideas out there?

Well, I sorta got it working. I couldn't find a cloning application which supported software RAID, so I messed around with rsync a bit. In case anyone stumbles across this thread, here's what I did:

Quote:

rsync -vrpoglHDIt --exclude=/proc --exclude=/dev --exclude=/sys --exclude=/tmp --exclude=/etc/mdadm.conf --exclude=/etc/fstab --progress 192.168.1.1:/ /

NOTE:
- Options given can be found in the Rsync man page [-vrpoglHDIt]
- Replace 192.168.1.1 with the hostname or IP of the machine you wish to copy from.
- Excluding the mdadm.conf is important, as it contains a unique UUID
- I also excluded other config files, which are not given in the above examples (SSH keys, eth0 config, etc.). I suggest you do so as well.

So far, the machine seems to be working just fine. I posted this issue on a couple boards, and got zero replies. So I hope I'm not missing something here. If you see something you shouldn't, feel free to reply.