Dell Poweredge Raid setup question

[ct1]

Hi Guys
Got a Dell Poweredge 2900 with Perc 5/i integrated card + Perc 5/e external Raid card.
Need to set up 5 x 500gb drives, ideally 2xdrives mirrored (on virtual drive) 2xdrives mirrored(another virtual drive) & 1 global or dedicated hotspare.
On boot up I have gone into raid controller (i guess this is the best way to set up), and gone into controller 0(prec5/i), it sees all the drives and I managed to set up one virtual drive + 1 globel hotspare, but I can not work out how to set up the last two drives into another virtual drive? Can I achieve this on one controller, or do I need one controller per pyhisical drive?

Im new to the Raid systems but keen to learn.

Thanks

Mark

[sammy]

Hi Mark,

you definitely can setup RAID with 2 arrays (2 mirrors) and a hot spare for both arrays on the internal controller. You need to assign the disks to separate arrays on the config screen, and then you will have the option of assigning a online spare to different arrays, as long as you leave that 5th disk out of the previous 2 arrays.

I think possibly you are getting muddled with the terminolgy which is easy because it can be confusing. You need to set up 2 hardware level arrays, array A which will have the first 2 physical disks, then create the logical disk space on that array which will maximum be the size of 1 disk in that array if you assign that array as RAID 1 mirror. Then do the same for the second array, and create the logical drive , same as before. Then assign the spare to each array.

If your wondering why there is a second raid controller in there, that is possibly becuase the server had an external storage box or DAS box attached which was being controlled and sliced up using that external card.

Hope i have not confused you.

sam

[ct1]

Thanks for the answer Sam, that all makes sense. Is that all possible from the BIOS setup? I wanted to make sure the Raids could all be handled via the BIOS so that worst case (no OS) I could gain access to the setup for Raids.

Am I right in thinking, you could set up from OS with Dell software AS WELL as Bios?

Cheers

Mark

[Oops_my_bad]

Dunno about DELL but usually there is a seperate utility for setting up the RAID stuff (runs after BIOS but before OS - the RAID controller will have it's own mini bios/operating system so if you loose the OS the data is still there)

[keithu]

On the Perc 5 each 'virtual drive' is termed a Container. All you need to do is take the option to 'Create Container', select the drives you want to use and 'Ins'ert them, then choose the RAID level you want to use (RAID 1 for mirrored).

[sammy]

Is that all possible from the BIOS setup? I wanted to make sure the Raids could all be handled via the BIOS so that worst case (no OS) I could gain access to the setup for Raids.

Am I right in thinking, you could set up from OS with Dell software AS WELL as Bios?

Hi mark,

yes it is all possible from the bios or more accurately the RAID controller utility which resides on the RAID controller. You can also use the DELL software cd which will give you a more GUI version of the same information. I prefer using the RAID controller utility becuase its quicker, and simpler.

Have a great day.... hopefully not spending much more time on RAID....i mean its supposed to be the festive season..

Sam