Guy Harris wrote:
Err, umm, if more than one of the disks in your RAID array have "failed" to the extent that more than one of them is inaccessible to the filer, you cannot, in fact, access any of your data any more, except for copies on your backup tapes. Maybe the reboot will make enough of the disks accessible that the problem is transient, but that's not guaranteed.
(E.g., to take an extreme example, ripping two drives out of your filer and pounding them to scrap metal with a sledgehammer will certainly render data on them inaccessible. Hard read or write errors on two drives will have the same effect, if a reboot doesn't make the errors go away.)
Okay, Guy is correct as always. However, I have been in Escalations for a year now, and I have seen the nastiest situations during that time, and I have not yet seen one like what Guy describes above. I guess most people don't keep a sledgehammer in the office :)
Incidentally, CEO's are almost as bad as a sledgehammer. I had a call where a proud CEO walked into the "sysadmin territory" of his company and tried to show his business buddies how he could rip drives our of his nifty little filer and it would stay up. It was hilarious.