Third Party Software

The last option is to install third party software capable of monitoring your server’s storage, onto your server’s operating system.

There is a wide variety of monitoring software that you can download. Which one would be best for your server depends on your server’s operating system, which RAID controller you server is using, and what the make and model of you server is. You can download these through third parties; some free of charge and some at a cost. A populate monitoring software for Dell PowerEdge server is their OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA) software.

The benefit of using a third party piece of software, like OMSA, is that they do not require any downtime to identify a failed drive and its details. The down side to these third party softwares are that they require the server to be online and remotely accessible. Also, as they are created by third parties, you must be careful about the security of these pieces of software.

You should be able to use one of the above three methods to identify any failed drives and these drives’ details (e.g. serial number, physical drive bay number, capacity, etc.). When you have identified all of these details, please raise a ticket through your MyServers control panel, and a member of our team will be happy to help.

Please feel free to use our FAQ for examples on how to use the above methods, to identify a failed drive and its details.

We would suggest always taking a full back-up of any data on your server before we perform any work, to a storage/backup device external to the server, as there is always a risk of data loss.

If you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch.