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Dell PE2950 RAID5 migration to RAID 10
Hello Guru's
I have a Dell PE2950 with RAID5 config (4x 73Gb SAS), Windows Server 2003 R2, Standard Edition OS & 4Gb RAM, PERC 6/i Integrated. My customer is requesting to upgrade the memory to 16Gb RAM and expand the HDD capacity to 200Gb with RAID 10 config since this has more writing speed (not so sure) . As my initial suggestion, in order to expand the RAM, I need to upgrade first the OS to Windows Server 2003 64-bit and add the additional 12Gb of RAM. Also, I am planning to add 2x 73Gb SAS disk to catch up on the 200Gb HDD requirement. Based on the Capacity planning tool that my vendor generously lend to us... the report shows that we have a bottleneck on I/O utilization. As I have mentioned earlier we are currently running on RAID 5 and planning to migrate to RAID 10. Does this plan makes sense?
I appreciate any advise you can give me.
Thank you,
theflash1932
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April 23rd, 2012 21:00
As I said, and as Chris was intending to say ... you cannot go from a RAID 5 to a RAID 10 without backing up, deleting array, creating new array, restoring data.
theflash1932
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April 23rd, 2012 08:00
Just a couple of things, which you may or may not already know:
DELL-Chris H
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April 23rd, 2012 08:00
Coolass,
What is the raid controller installed? If it is a Perc 5 or 6 then you can not migrate to a Raid 10 while maintaining the data.
If you follow this link it will show you the migration possibilities from the different controllers.
support.dell.com/.../document.aspx
theflash1932
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April 23rd, 2012 21:00
If you delete the RAID 5 config, the data will not be gone - it will only delete the metadata that contains the RAID information, HOWEVER, you can't use that data in any other RAID array. The only thing you can do to use that data is re-create the RAID 5 EXACTLY as it was before. If you delete the RAID 5, then create a RAID 10 without initializing the array in the hopes of gaining access to that data, it will NOT work; with metadata telling the controller to read and write using RAID 10 algorithms, it will NOT be able to read the data that was previously on it written using RAID 5 algorithms. So, technically, no the data is not deleted when the RAID 5 is deleted, but because you can do nothing with it, in practical terms, YES, the data is gone. Backup and restore is what you want to do.
Coolasscc
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April 23rd, 2012 21:00
Hi theflash1932,
Thank you for the inputs. That is a major challenge on our part, should I delete the RAID 5 config does it mean that the files will be deleted as well? I think the 4-disk RAID 10 and 2-disk RAID 1 will do for us.
Again, thank you for enlighting things up.
Coolass
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April 23rd, 2012 21:00
Hi Chris H,
Thank you for the documentation you have given. My controller is Perc 6/i Integrated. Upon checking on the link you have given on table 10-1, Perc 6/i does not have a scenario from RAID 5 to RAID 10. Does this mean that it is not possible to change my RAID configuration on the current controller? Can you suggest what to do to change my RAID config?
Any help will do.
Thank you,
Coolass
Coolasscc
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April 23rd, 2012 22:00
Well explained :emotion-2:, now I understand how to deal with it, I just want to confirm if my current controller is capable of creating a RAID 10 config.
Thanks a lot!