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Extend Raid R710 w/ Perc 6/i
I have a R710 with a Perc 6/i
We have 2 VD's set up. A two disc RAID 1, and a 4 disc RAID 5. The RAID 5 had 4 1tb drives. I have replaced the drives with 2tb drives. OMSA sees the drives as 2tb but it appears OMSA does not allow drive reconfiguration with the PERC 6i controllers.
I have current backups but I am hoping I can reconfigure the drive without losing my data. If I power down and run the RAID management utility will the drive keep their data? I dont see where the drives will lose data unless I re-initialize them.
Am I correct in thinking the drives will keep the data? It will be a huge time saver.
Thanks
KD
theflash1932
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February 6th, 2013 12:00
If you replace the disks one at a time, the VD will remain the original size. There is no way to change the VD size with this method. The only thing you can do now is create a second RAID 5 across the disks, using the 1TB available per disk. This will appear in the OS as a new and separate "disk", so it, and its partitions, cannot be merged with the existing disk/partitions. If you MUST have a single "disk" of the full amount, then you will need to backup, delete VD, create VD, restore.
The PERC supports Online Capacity Expansion, but it does not work by replacing existing disks with smaller disks, but by ADDING disks to your array. For example, you could expand a 3TB (4x1TB) RAID 5 to a 7TB RAID 5 by adding four new disks and converting the 4-disk RAID 5 to an 8-disk RAID 5.
raided
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February 27th, 2013 16:00
Image out, make array, image back.
Or kill Raid5, Re-Make to Raid5; DON'T INITIALIZE (remap container to farther out, but don't clear).
Assumes, present RAID5 is over 2T limit and so is already GPT'd; Due to size of final array would need GPT not MBR.
Then expand OS partition container, inside of controller RAID container.
IF not GPT'd, would have to remake as GPT to see whole size of array in OS layer.
theflash1932
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February 27th, 2013 17:00
What you describe is called a "retag". A retag was designed to recover lost configurations, NOT to expand a virtual disk. When doing a retag, it will appear to have expanded the RAID array, but it will not be stable as the data fills into the new space and will eventually fail. Expanding a VD is a side-effect of a retag, not its intended use.
raided
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February 28th, 2013 23:00
Sorry, i thought LSI even allowed the 1068 to do this (+1E) natively.
Thought that imaging to a larger HD at home; and not stretching C: was an MS thang about boot partition container not array layer container.
Would it be better to add, not extend partition if tried (especially if this was boot partition)?
theflash1932
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March 1st, 2013 07:00
Not sure I understand some of your last post - about "MS boot container" vs. "array layer container".
What do you mean by "add"? The PERC supports Online Capacity Expansion, not by replacing drives with larger ones, but by ADDING disks to your array - for example, converting a 3-disk RAID 5 to a 4-disk RAID 5 (or more).