Dell PowerEdge 2500 Hard Drive Question

Greetings,

I was reposting to see if anyone had any input on this topic as far as adding hard drives to our RAID controller.

Thanks, Joel

If you have a hardware array, you can add the drives to the array using Dell Open Manage Array Manager. Do you know what model PERC controller is in the server? Also would help to know firmware version and operating system. You will see the PERC model and firmware version when the server POSTs. Should see something like "Dell Poweredge Expandable RAID controller3 Di...frmw 2.1-3" .

Hi John,

Excuse any stupidity on my part, I have been doing computers and networks for over 11 years but this is really my first bout with RAID.

So I checked in the system properties and found that we have:

1-Apaptec AIC-7899 Ultra 160/m PCI SCSI Card
1-Dell PERC 3/Di RAID Controller

Also, the OS is Windows 2000 Server and the Firmware version of the controller I am not sure on.  We'd have to take the server down which has to be planned because it serves 3 offices around the world.  Is there another way to get the FW info?

Thanks,
Joel

If you have Dell Open Manage Array Manager installed, you can open Array manager, right click on the PERC Controller and go to properties. It should show the firmware version. If array manager is not loaded, the only way to tell is by rebooting.

John,

Interesting, I went to the properties however the ArrayManager does not show the controller.  So I went into the Array Utilities and went to the "Versions" tab and that says that the PERC2 is not installed, but passed.  How can that be?  Is the SCSI controller maybe controlling the hard drives?  It makes no sense to me.  The Array program is version 4.51 and we are running IE 6.0 on the server.

Joel

Joel, there are some older utilities called PERC2 console and/or FAST. If you have these products and you are running Windows 2000 Server, recommend you uninstall them and load Array Manager version 3.41. Below is a link for Dell Open Manage Array manager.

Joel, The version 4.51 is thowing me off. The latest version of array manager is 3.6. Below is a link to array manager 3.41. It seems to work better with Windows 2000 server. Try loading this.

Array Manager

Hi John,

I downloaded the update.  I have a question, if the system is using SCSI is anything going to be affected by installing this ArrayManager?  I just want to make sure that we are not going to affect anything with the server by installing this download.  Otherwise, pending hearing from you on that, I am ready to install it.

Joel

Array Manager will not effect the straight scsi controllers in the server.  The scsi controllers will appear and you will be able to see them in the  Array manager console.

OK, will do that and post back when finished.  Most likely tomorrow or Friday.  thanks,

Joel

Joel, You probably need to make some space on the C: partition, maybe delete some files that are not needed, move page file to the D: partiton if you have one, etc. In the bios of the perc controller (Cntrl-A) you can build another container with the two additional drives and use the additional space, but you can't add the two drives to the current container in the bios--you have to use something like Array Manager.