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PowerEdge 2900 (and 2950) with PERC 5i - expand Raid 5
Hi,
I have a Dell Server (PowerEdge 2900) with a PERC 5i Raid Controller (with BBWC) and 4 SATA Disks installed (one virtual disk Raid 5, Windows 2008).
Now I got an additional Disk Drive (same capacity, same speed) and installed it in the server.
I tried to expand the existing virtual disk (and disk group) with the new physical disk drive in the controller bios and in openmanage server administrator (managed node) running on windows.
But it's not possible to do with this Raid Cntrl?!
Is there a way to accomplish this without data loss and keeping redundancy by raid 5?
The same procedure I need to do on a PE2950 (PERC5i)
Thank you and best regards,
loop11
theflash1932
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May 14th, 2011 08:00
What did you try exactly, and what happened/what did you see? You did not mention anything that leads me to believe you were attempting this in the right place :)
The PERC 5/i can definitely do it:
With the disk inserted, go to OMSA, Storage, PERC, Enclosure/Backplane, Physical Disks, and make sure your disk is showing Ready.
If Ready, go to OMSA, Storage, PERC, Virtual Disks, choose Reconfigure from the dropdown menu for your RAID 5, follow the wizard to add the disk.
If the disk is showing Foreign, go to OMSA, Storage, PERC, Information/Configuration (link at top of page), choose Foreign/Clear from the dropdown menu, then follow the instruction above.
loop11
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May 14th, 2011 09:00
Thank you very much!
Yesterday i selected Foreign/Clear from the dropdown menu, then a background initialization was running - i didnt have the option to reconfigure the virtual disk (maybe because of the bg init? Or i missed it?).
But now there is this option available and I followed your instructions
Thanks again and best regards,
loop11
Dev Mgr
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May 14th, 2011 09:00
There is one exception to the ability to grow a virtual disk; if you raid 5 was split into 2 virtual disks (e.g. 50GB for a boot drive and the rest for a data drive), you cannot grow the raid 5 set.
Another note: you didn't mention your drive sizes, but if your boot virtual disk goes over 2TB by growing the raid 5, you'll never ben able to use the part of the virtual disk after the 2TB mark on the virtual disk. If you're using drives up to 500GB, you're fine (a 5-drive raid 5 would be 4 x ~465GB in disk size, so well below the 2048GB (2TB) size), but if you're using 750's or larger, you'll run into this problem.
theflash1932
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May 14th, 2011 16:00
Yes, the background init will disable most virtual disk functions, including Reconfigure.
Glad you got it sorted.
npdave
5 Posts
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August 4th, 2011 09:00
I'm in exactly the same situation, and am very glad to have googled this posting. I have an question regarding one of the followups...
You stated:
"There is one exception to the ability to grow a virtual disk; if you raid 5 was split into 2 virtual disks (e.g. 50GB for a boot drive and the rest for a data drive), you cannot grow the raid 5 set."
Now my RAID 5 volume is listed in OMSA as a single virtual disk. However, in the Disk Management MMC, that virtual drive is partitioned into 2 logical drives. Can this array be expanded?
Thanks!
theflash1932
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August 4th, 2011 11:00
Expanding a Windows partition is not the same as expanding a Virtual Disk. The Virtual Disk is handled by the controller and, once configured, is presented to Windows as a physical "disk" in Windows Disk Management. If there was more than one VD configured on the controller, it would appear as multiple "disks" in DM. Since you only have a single VD, you can expand the VD by adding disks to the array. If you need to expand the actual Windows partitions, that is done differently.
npdave
5 Posts
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August 4th, 2011 11:00
Thanks a ton for the followup. I believe I'll still do this on a Friday night, or Saturday morning, after a good strong backup, when I have a ton of recovery time. But at least I can expect better results that I did when I first read through this post. :)
beyeneabdu
5 Posts
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August 8th, 2011 05:00
"If Ready, go to OMSA, Storage, PERC, Virtual Disks, choose Reconfigure from the dropdown menu for your RAID 5, follow the wizard to add the disk."
I can not find these commands. Where did I find ;At boot or From Windows interface?
npdave
5 Posts
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August 8th, 2011 06:00
The commands are found in the web based server administrator.
theflash1932
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August 8th, 2011 08:00
You must first install OpenManage Server Administrator in Windows, then the instructions are step-by-step and simple to follow ... instructions won't make sense without the software.
beyeneabdu
5 Posts
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August 9th, 2011 04:00
I installed OMSA but when I try to Run the Server administrator it will ask me to enter USERNAME and PASSWORD but I did not enter Password when I installed the WIN 2003. I just enter username, product ID, Workgroup, Organization,
So how I can pass this LogIn interface?
Kind Regards
npdave
5 Posts
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August 9th, 2011 05:00
You login using the local machine administrator account. If this is a domain server, you can also login using a domain admin account.
beyeneabdu
5 Posts
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August 9th, 2011 07:00
It is not Domain member. I tried with local account and It is not login with local machine account . The local Machine username is Administrator and has no Password. Please tell me if you have other means.
Kind Regards
npdave
5 Posts
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August 9th, 2011 08:00
You would be best to set a password and try again. There's no reason for a server to not have a password. It may be that the login URL just won't accept a blank password.
theflash1932
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August 9th, 2011 09:00
Also ... put your local machine, port 1311 in IE's Intranet Zone, and it should automatically login, unless you disabled that feature.