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Dell R710/Perc H700 Configuration
Fairly new to Windows servers so these are probably basic questions for the group. We have acquired a Dell R710 with the Perc H700 raid controller and 6x600GB SAS drives. I installed Windows 2008 on the system but when I look at the system I only see two disks, disk 0 = 1800GB and Disk 1 = 992GB.
What I'd like to do is the following:
Configure the drives so that I have 3 of the 600GB drives in a Raid 5 configuration and the other 3 in a separate Raid 5 configuration. The idea is that we will have raid configured but we would backup the server to disk on the other set of disks.
Is this possible?
How should I start? I assume I will have to use some type of raid configure tool to configure the drives in this fashion.
Any advice on how to get started?
Thanks in advanced.
Dev Mgr
9.3K Posts
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April 5th, 2011 14:00
You'll need to back up any data you have first.
Then you reboot and go into the PERC bios. You would delete the current virtual disks and then create a 3-disk raid 5 and a 2nd 3-disk raid 5. Now you install Windows again.
Most likely the current configuration is a 6-disk raid 5 with 2 virtual disks (as a computer with a bios cannot boot to a disk over 2TB in size).
DELL-Daniel R
57 Posts
1
April 5th, 2011 14:00
That configuration is possible. Reconfiguring the RAID arrays will require that you reinstall the operating system once you are done.
There are a couple of ways to get the RAID arrays configured. The first option how Dev Mgr mentioned, backup then create the new arrays by entering the RAID controller BIOS by pressing CTL+R during POST when you see the prompt. The follow the instructions found at the link below to configure your 2 RAID 5 arrays and initialize them. After they are created you can install the operating system as you did before and restore your data.
<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>
The second option is to use the Unified Server Configurator to create your first RAID 5 and install the OS. The USC is accessed by pressing F10 at the Dell splash screen. Once the utility loads you can start the process by selecting Deploy OS. After you have the OS installed you will need to create the secondary array either through the controller BIOS or by using Open Manage Server Administrator. Instructions for using the USC can be found here
<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>
DELL-Daniel R
57 Posts
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May 3rd, 2011 10:00
The H700 drivers will need to be extracted and then loaded using a USB stick. Not sure what flavor of Windows 2008 you are running but I included the link for the 2008 x86 driver below that you can extract to a USB stick. Just copy the 5 files that the executable extracts to the stick and point to OS install to it.
cstripling
14 Posts
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April 6th, 2011 07:00
Thanks so much for the advice! There currently is no data on the server so this should be easy I think. Appreciate the information.
cstripling
14 Posts
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April 6th, 2011 07:00
Thanks for the details. I appreciate you taking the time to give me this information. I think I am going to try the previous suggestion first. Thanks for the link with the great information.
cstripling
14 Posts
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May 3rd, 2011 08:00
I finally got around to trying this and was able to configure the RAID as described. I have created 2 Raid 5 arrays and initialized them. When the system reboots, it shows two virtual drives and then boots to the Windows 2008 Server media. I start the install but it does not see any drives. My only option is to load drivers, etc.
Any advice from this point?
cstripling
14 Posts
0
May 3rd, 2011 11:00
Thanks! Will give it a shot.