How I enabled RAID 1 on new Mac Mini Server WITHOUT DVD/REINSTALL!

[carlclarke]

I had the -10000 error so...

(1) I used CarbonCopyCloner to create a copy bootable disk using a usb drive.

(2) Went to System Prefs and set the boot drive to the new usb disk and restarted the mac mini server.

(3) I proceeded with the instructions as per e_whizz, the first part was ok, list the disks then:

diskutil appleRAID enable mirror disktomirror

that worked ok but:

diskutil appleRAID add member newdisk raidvolume

just kept saying no! with different error codes. Maybe it was me?

(4) So I went to the disk utility and the first 500GB drive was showing up on the RAID tab so I dragged and dropped the second 500GB disk underneath it and updated it. Now it says Rebuilding RAID - Estimated time left in rebuild 3 hours... (it did start at 1 day 22 hours so be brave).

I will come back and let you know if it worked in a while...

 

[rickvanr]

I don't see the big deal here, I did this with my G5 years ago using Disk Utility.

Copy Internal disk to external drive, start up from external. Set internal drive to RAID 0, 1, whatever. Copy external disk over to new RAID.

Viola. Piece of cake

Or is the Mini Server have some special hardware RAID?

 

[carlclarke]

I had the -10000 error so... It worked.

I don't see the big deal here, I did this with my G5 years ago using Disk Utility.

Copy Internal disk to external drive, start up from external. Set internal drive to RAID 0, 1, whatever. Copy external disk over to new RAID.

Viola. Piece of cake

Or is the Mini Server have some special hardware RAID?

Well dick, I think the big deal is that some people wanted to set up RAID mirroring on the new Mac Mini Server and the instructions kindly provided by e_whizz didn't work for everyone who tried them. A few people, you now included, have made suggestions to solve the problem. This sharing of knowledge and experience benefits the community.

As far as I know (and I do not know everything) there is no 'special' hardware RAID in the Mac Mini Server - just two internal 500GB disks.

HTH

Carl.

 

[rickvanr]

I hope that was a typo Carl

 

[gordonb]

half as good as e_whizz

I think you can avoid the effort of cloning the disk to an external drive (I'm not advising against taking a backup, of course).

I tried the instructions given by e_whizz and got the unmount error. This was on a brand new machine out of the box today, so I'd made no changes to the system. I tried running as root, no joy. I could just have reinstalled from DVD, but thought I'd play a bit...

If you boot from the Mac OS X Server Install DVD, rather than go into the new installation, there's a Utilities menu with a couple of options. I tried the Disk Utility from there, but I wasn't exactly sure what was going on, so I reverted to a terminal and followed e_whizz's instructions from there. They worked, though the rebuild did not seem to start.

I booted back into normal mode, checked the Disk Utility and saw that the mirror was degraded - the 2nd disk was not synching, and it failed when I tried the Rebuild button. Eventually I had to remove the 2nd disk from the RAID array, then re-add it; and now it's busy synching.

So if I were doing it over again I would try this:

1. Boot from DVD
2. Utilities - Terminal
3. diskutil appleRAID enable mirror disktomirror
4. Boot normally
5. Disk Utility - add the spare disk into the array
6. Watch it rebuild (synch up)

However I'm fairly sure that a complete reinstallation would have been quicker than the time taken to synch up the new mirror. YMMV!

 

[Wile E. Quixote]

This is what I did. It required a reboot, but no reinstall.

I followed e_whizz's instructions ( Thanks! ) and ran into the same problem with the disk not unmounting . I didn't want to reinstall or boot off of a DVD so I did the following.

1) I downloaded a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner (which everyone should have a copy of) and cloned my boot disk, named "ueberserver" to the secondary disk "Macintosh HD2".

2) When the disk was finished cloning I went into the startup disk control panel and selected "Macintosh HD2" as the boot disk and rebooted the system.

3) Once I was rebooted and using "Macintosh HD2" as my boot disk I ran

diskutil AppleRAID enable mirror disk0s2
​

And got the following output:

/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS ueberserver 499.8 GB disk0s2
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk1
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD2 499.8 GB disk1s2
ueberserver:~ jamie$ diskutil AppleRAID enable mirror disk0s2
Started RAID operation on disk0s2 ueberserver
Resizing disk
Unmounting disk
Adding booter for disk
Creating RAID set
Bringing RAID partition online
Waiting for new RAID to spin up "7B824483-6E4B-4520-BA0F-161DFA51A359"
Finished RAID operation on disk0s2 ueberserver

4) I went back into the Startup Disk control panel and selected the "ueberserver" drive, disk0, as the boot volume and rebooted the system.

5) Once I was rebooted and using the "ueberserver" disk as the boot disk I ran.

diskutil AppleRAID enable mirror disk0s2
​

The output looked like this:

Started RAID operation on disk0s2 ueberserver
Resizing disk
Unmounting disk
Adding booter for disk
Creating RAID set
Bringing RAID partition online
Waiting for new RAID to spin up "7B824483-6E4B-4520-BA0F-161DFA51A359"
Finished RAID operation on disk0s2 ueberserver

6) Running

diskutil AppleRAID list​

Produced this output

AppleRAID sets (1 found)
===============================================================================
Name: ueberserver
Unique ID: 7B824483-6E4B-4520-BA0F-161DFA51A359
Type: Mirror
Status: Degraded
Size: 499.8 GB (499763871744 Bytes)
Rebuild: manual
Device Node: disk2
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Device Node UUID Status
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0 disk0s2 9E911EC2-F3D2-4EDA-BDF0-03419FAD1BA5 Online
1 disk1s2 DEFD4471-7E67-48C3-A6B4-06DE32F1B06F 0% (FAILED)
===============================================================================

The second disk was showing as failed because it had data on it. I could have fixed this from the command line but instead went into Disk Utility and told it to rebuild the RAID mirror. Disk Utility warned me that doing so would erase all of the data on disk1s2, which I was OK with, and I clicked OK and off it went.

7) After telling disk utility to rebuild the RAID set

diskutil AppleRAID list
​

showed the following output:

AppleRAID sets (1 found)
===============================================================================
Name: ueberserver
Unique ID: 7B824483-6E4B-4520-BA0F-161DFA51A359
Type: Mirror
Status: Degraded
Size: 499.8 GB (499763871744 Bytes)
Rebuild: manual
Device Node: disk2
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Device Node UUID Status
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0 disk0s2 9E911EC2-F3D2-4EDA-BDF0-03419FAD1BA5 Online
1 disk1s2 DEFD4471-7E67-48C3-A6B4-06DE32F1B06F 8% (Rebuilding)
===============================================================================

Thanks to e_whizz for posting some great instructions and to the nice folks who write Carbon Copy Cloner (throw some bucks their way, this utility can save your butt). I'm stumped as to why some people were able to run this without issue, the only thing I can think of that might have caused this, which I didn't think of until after I had gone through the steps listed above, was to run the initial diskutil command , was to run the initial

diskutil AppleRAID enable mirror disk0s2​

with sudo. Perhaps the failure to unmount was a permissions problem, although that seems unlikely.

 

[Fantus71]

Easy solution to "error -10000 "Could not unmount disk"

Hi
I had the same error -10000 "Could not unmount disk"

Just boot on the install dvd and run terminal from the dvd, after setting up the RAID just quit install and reboot...

I did this on two machines and it worked just great

 

[big-lebowski]

So if I were doing it over again I would try this:

1. Boot from DVD
2. Utilities - Terminal
3. diskutil appleRAID enable mirror disktomirror
4. Boot normally
5. Disk Utility - add the spare disk into the array
6. Watch it rebuild (synch up)

Thanks a lot for your guideline - i have one question only - what can i write to the disktomirror position exactly? /Volumes/Mirrordiskname or Mirrordiskname only? Thanks a lot for your answer.

 

[billib]

Clone Me Baby

Because testimonials are better than any ad!

Seriously, I have no relationship with them and never heard of the program until on this forum in another thread. But it saved the day!

Feel free to suggest alternatives that work. This worked for me.

You could also use "Carbon Copy Cloner"

http://www.bombich.com/

as well as the "Restore" feature in Mac's own "Disc Utility".
I've used both App's and the Restore feature, all worked well.

 

[jkhademi]

I agree with ALRESCHA. If you can, its quicker just to boot from a fresh OS DVD (perhaps not the shipped install DVD in my case) and use Disk Utility to make the array, thereafter continuing through a normal install. That's how I got everything to work. As the other poster mentioned, a target disk, or remote OS install might also work, but I had tried those with the shipped install DVD and nothing worked with that disk. So, with a clean OS disk from a different installation, and an external DVD being USB attached, I was able to reach a RAID 0 install config, and all is well now. As ALRESCHA says, it took no more than about 15-20 minutes.

JG

See...here is the problem...things that "should work" often don't.
Some things that "shouldn't work" do.

I have two of the first MacMini's that shipped with SLS.

I bought the second one with the intent of using the SLS disk in my Nehalem MacPro. There is nothing in the EULA to preclude this. The EULA says I can install it on ONE computer. Doesn't say it had to be on the MacMini.

It won't install on the MacPro off the distribution DVD.
Won't install on my Harpertown Xserve either.
Also wouldn't install on my 13" Core2Duo.

So...I installed it on the MiniServer, SuperDupered over to a 2.5" USB drive that I had disassembled. Booted the MiniServer off the USB drive to confirm working. Threw that into the MacPro-->Boots. Also works on the Xserve.

My production config is:
http://discussions.info.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11697299#11697299

I was dinking around with my 15" i7 MBP just this last weekend that I upgraded to a "non-apple" WD750GB drive and thought I'd give SLS a try on that box. Wouldn't install. Threw the original 500G in. No install. Pulled a working, known booting off the internal drive bay and USB a 2.5" 1TB SLS10.6.3 out of the Xserve. Put it internal in the i7. Won't boot. Tried "Hot-wired" USB the 1TB. No boot. SuperDupered a 750G same config. Won't boot on the i7. Boots in the MacPro. So these are all "known booting" configs in MacPro and Xserve, both internal and USB. No boot in i7

Then...pulled the 750G SL10.6.3 that was internal in the i7 to the USB port using a broken apart USB drive adapter.

Now...Get this: SLS installed and actually "upgraded" SL 10.6.3 on the USB port to SLS 10.6...which..."shouldn't work".
Then...upgraded SLS 10.6 to 10.6.4.

Since I can only have two copies of SLS (they actually "see" eachother's S/N on the network) I reverted the MacPro back to it's original SL config.

Current production config is as above in Apple thread, + 15" i7 MBP, SLS 10.6.4.

Bottom line? Same as top "two lines"


[Edit: A final read on this is that SLS install CD's seem to have some "model specific" stuff in them. Also...Booting installed SL and SLS on a hard drive on one computer doesn't necessarily mean...or...preclude them from working...or...not working on a different box.]

 

[HGW]

raid mac mini

so what kind of performance gain are you getting?

 

[MacToddB]

so what kind of performance gain are you getting?

The goal of RAID 1 is redundancy, through mirroring. If anything, there could be a performance hit, as the data is written twice (on the same bus, correct?). But I've had the server for about 3/4 of year with no disk-related downtime, so that was my goal.

 

[Mike-B]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the info in this thread. It was a great help.
Just to clarify - for those that were getting the unmount error when using the command line - you MUST boot from another source for this to work.

The process I followed is this:
1: Configure new Mac Mini Server
2: Create a bootable image using CCC or SuperDuper etc.
3: Boot from the backup image. A good way to make sure your backup is working.
4: Start Terminal. Then follow the instructions in e-whizz's first post. To summarise:
5: Type: diskutil list <- To confirm the Identifier of the volume you want to mirror (and data you want to keep). On a Mac Mini Server this should be disk0s2
6: Type: diskutil appleRAID enable mirror disk0s2
7: Type: diskutil list <- To confirm the Identifier of the new RAID drive you will be adding the second volume to, and the Identifier of the second volume you want to add to the RAID. On a Mac Mini Server booting off a bootable partition, the volume would be disk1s2 (AKA Macintosh HD2) and the new RAID should be disk3 but use your brain!
8: Type: diskutil appleRAID add member disk1s2 disk3 <- Make sure your identifiers are correct for your setup.
9: After that you may see the Rebuilding RAID progress box appear or I just went back into Disk Utility and the Disk Utility Progress box popped up.

You can also track the progress in Terminal by typing: diskutil appleRAID list

Rebuild took a couple of hours as only the OS was installed at that point. When done reboot to your newly mirrored server.

Hope this rehash/summary helps.

 

[xy77]

Remote DVD/CD

Thanks for a lot of helpful input in this thread, simplifies things.

However I had to find out, in order to provide remote DVD access, you have to start the Remote OSX Installation in Programs/Utilities on the providing mac; otherwise the DVD is not available. I didn't see a reference to that here, but I might as well have overlooked it.

 

[cartman.erik]

I did some Googling (on my functional Macbook Pro) and learned that by holding the Option key down, at boot time, I could choose to boot from my working External drive. Also learned that the ALT key on a PC keyboard (which I was using) works as the Option key for a Mac!

Questions:
1. Does holding down the "option" key work with the blue-tooth Aluminum keyboard?
2. I normally use screen sharing on my MB Pro to control the minimac server. Would I actually need a wired mouse and wired keyboard to achieve the operation describe?

Thank you.

 

[UKenGB]

Questions:
1. Does holding down the "option" key work with the blue-tooth Aluminum keyboard?
2. I normally use screen sharing on my MB Pro to control the minimac server. Would I actually need a wired mouse and wired keyboard to achieve the operation describe?
Thank you.

1. Yes

2. Mouse not required, but a wired keyboard would be.

However, you could use the Startup Disk system pref to specify what to boot from and then you wouldn't need the keyboard to choose at boot time.

 

[lilgto64]

Yikes

Wow did I mess that up - everything was going okay - I had created a cloned copy of the recovery partition first - but then when I created the RAID set - a second Apple Boot partition was created - so I tried to fiddle with the Recovery Partition and the Apple Boot partition so that I would have all the same partitions and sizes on both physical drives. I was thinking that the RAID function only cared about the RAID slices - but i was wrong. So I decided to break the mirror and start over - which is a bad idea while the rebuild in in progress as it resulted in both drives being blank.

Fortunately I am booted from an external clone of the Server OS install I was running just before I started the RAID process.

In any case - setting up the RAID pairing on blank drives takes seconds - I may have lost the recovery partition - or at least don't have two instances of it.

I do have the external boot partition as a fallback and or can set that up as a private TimeMachine for the server itself.

Next step - after rebooting to internal mirror - is to setup multiple TimeMachine targets with quotas for each connected user - then setup for backup from users outside my local network.

 

[mschiltz]

Carbon Copy Cloner

This was a GREAT post! My new MAC mini server doesn't even come with the install DVD anymore so I was frustrated. This is my first MAC. The only change I would make to the steps is that I used Carbon Copy Cloner which has a 30 day free trial.

Since I was only using this software for the cloning to set up RAID 1, I didn't want to pay $28 for a one-time solution. The Carbon Copy Cloner worked perfect the first time and was very easy to use with very helpful "help" files with step-by-step instructions for a newbie like me.