> One question remains: ok but what is hot-swap anyway? A "Hot Swappable Component" refers to any system component which can be replaced without shutting down the machine. My servers at work have hot swappable PCI slots, for example. Most often though you have to tell the OS the device is about to vanish otherwise things break. It can refer to non-raid controllers that allow you to remove drives without hanging the bus they attach to. If it's in use you still have tell the OS it's about to vanish, unmount file systems, etc. I have an SAS/SATA controller at home that does this. In the context of RAID, "hot swap" typically refers to any system which allows drives to be changed out on a live system without having to interact with the operating system beforehand. IBM's ServeRAID controllers are a good example. Replacing a failed drive is as simple as walking over to the server, pulling out the drive identified as defective, and inserting a replacement. The raid controller recognizes the replacement and begins to integrate it back into the array within 30secs. Hope that helps. -- Drew "Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood." --Marie Curie -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
