Server disk config

[Stuart_C]

Ive got a win 2k8r2 Dell poweredge r710 server and I'm planning to add a couple of disks to it. Currently I've got a two drives in a raid1 array and a virtual disk and 4 in a raid 5 array making a second virtual disk.

 

According to the help it's very easy to add disks in to the virtual disk (follow the "reconfigure" wizard) and presumably this will appear as free space on the disk that I can partition as I wish.

 

So basically I want to know is it as easy as the help makes it sound? Will it all work fine with the server running or will it require a re-boot?

 

Obviously here will be plenty of backups but I just thought I'd see if there were any pitfalls I should be carefully of.

[plexer]

Seems about right get the dell tools installed on the server add the drives expand the array.

 

Ben

[plexer]

I would have also gone for raid6.

 

Ben

[Stuart_C]

Tools installed. And I need the disk space more than the redundancy...

 

Just wondered if it's actually as easy as the help claims

[bossman]

@Stuart_C:

 

If you have data already on the second virtual disk you will have to destroy the data as new disks have to be initialised. As you have stated though this should not be a problem as you have backups.

 

Just turn the server off and put in the disks and then on boot up follow this tutorial:DELL Tutorial: Create RAID Using PERC 6/i Integrated BIOS Configuration Utility

 

Once setup restore your data from backups and voila! easy!

[Stuart_C]

You see that's interesting. The actuall instructions give the impression that it's all do-able though the server config manager (in Windows) and that you can add to the size of a virtual disk without destroying it.

[SYNACK]

You see that's interesting. The actuall instructions give the impression that it's all do-able though the server config manager (in Windows) and that you can add to the size of a virtual disk without destroying it.

 

Assuming its like the hp ones just shove the drives in and they should show up in the manager, add them to the virtual disk and it should expand over the span. When it has rebuilt the space should show up in disk manager on your server but you will have to expand the partitions. If they are not system partitions you can do this live under diskpart (2003 or disk manager (2008 and above).

 

If you are changing the type of RAID then you may have to rebuild depending on how much memory you have in the controller as it takes some space to migrate between some RAID levels.

[Stuart_C]

Despite me being nervous as this was my first time (adding disks to the array) it seems to have gone OK.

 

Whacked the disks in, reconfigured the virtual disk to include the extra physical ones, wait 6 hours for the array to rebuld (even though not changing the RAID level) and refresh the storage in Server Manager and I now seem to have an extra "600"GB of storage.

 

Will let it back up over night then I'm going to risk expanding a partition and adding some new drives to put stuff on.