HDD died, how do I recreate the secondary?

[mhab11]

I have a few servers that are part of the RDS. The HDD on one of my secondaries died so when I replaced the HDD that server is no longer part of the RDS. When I try to add a secondary I get an error that IP already exists. How do I delete that secondary if it is not showing up in the RDS or how to I associate the new HDD?

This is a test enviroment which is why I did not have the drive mirrored, but as this could be a real problem I would like to know how to fix it.

[mikebounds · Accepted solution]

Just to explain how this works:

When you run "vradmin/vxrds createpri" or create primary RVG from GUI, this creates RVG on primary only

When you run "vradmin/vxrds addsec" or add secondary from GUI, this creates RVG on secondary and creates RLink on BOTH primary and secondary.

As you have lost secondary, you now have RVG and rlink on Primary, and so an "add secondary" will fail as the rlink already exists on the primary.

So the way to resolve is to delete rlink on the primary and then you can run "add secondary".  I don't think you can do this from the GUI so you will need to use the command line:

vxprint -P (this will give you your rlink name and diskgroup name)
vxrlink -g diskgroup -f det rlink_name (detach rlink)
vxrlink -g diskgroup dis rlink_name (disassociate rlink)
vxedit -g diskgroup rm rlink_name (remove rlink)

Then you can add secondary as you did originally (if from command line you need to create volumes on secondary, but with GUI I think there is option for GUI to create volumes for you) and then you will need to   start your replication to sync from scratch.

Mike

[mhab11]

Worked like a charm, I was able to add back the secondary. All of my replication has been going great, is there any setting people tend to overlook that you would recommend?