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Adding Physical Drive
Current server configuration:
Dell PowerEdge 510 with 12 harddisk bays on H700 PERC controller. 4 bays are already used up for OS and Application installation. Configured with RAID 10
I need to install additional 8 harddisk into the remaining bays with RAID10 configuration to expand the server's storage capacity.
Is this possible without affecting the existing 4 disks which I already have OS and Application and Data in it? My IT informed me that there may be a risk when the RAID arrays are being rebuild, but it doesn't really make sense to me. Can someone please help to verfiy?
theflash1932
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October 26th, 2016 14:00
Yes, each volume (Virtual Disk or array) is seen as a separate "disk" by the OS.
Yes and no.
Yes: You can span them into a single volume in Windows, but I would STRONGLY recommend against it.
Yes: You could back up the data and create a new RAID 10 with all the disks.
No: This cannot be done at the hardware/controller level - you cannot dynamically expand "nested" RAID levels (10/50/60) like you can with RAID 1/5/6.
I believe you would be MUCH better off with a second larger volume.
theflash1932
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October 26th, 2016 11:00
As long as you have two separate RAID 10's: your existing one and a new one with the new disks, there will be NO issue having multiple arrays on the controller.
The only way you would have the possibility of problems is if you hand multiple arrays across the same set of disks - say 4 disks in a RAID 10, with one VD using 10% of that space and a second VD using the rest of it. You can't expand a RAID 10 anyway, so this probably doesn't affect you.
eetzen
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October 26th, 2016 11:00
If I configure 2 separate RAID 10s, does it mean that at the OS level I will see 2 different volumes?
Would it be possible to combine both volumes into one as this is storage for large media files?