PowerEdge 2900 with PERC 6i - expand Raid 5

Hi there,

Are the hard drives and interposer cards bought from Dell ? This would first eliminate if there are any hardware compatibility issues. Normally if a drive is shown as Ready, you should be able to configure the drive directly.

Considering that the disk drives are new, what you could try is to clear the foreign configurations on the SATA drive first. Presuming that all hard drives on your original RAID 5 disks are in optimal online state, performing the clear foreign config action should not affect the VD. Once cleared, both SATA drives should show up as Ready and you can try to configure the drives either in OMSA or the PERC BIOS.

You may refer to the guide below on how to perform clear foreign config :

http://dell.to/HC9jzB

Thank you.

DC Lim

Dell | Social Outreach Services - Enterprise

Please follow @DellCaresPro on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DellCaresPro

Thanks for the reply but another problem is that iwhen i go to storage i am seeing to connectors and the other one has the my first drives and connector (1) shows 2 added HDD but the option of configure is not showing on the 1st drive and the one which shows foregn only shows available task. blink and unblink

You can't do anything from the "disk" tasks.

Dao gave you a link to tell you how to clear the foreign config:  Open OMSA, Storage, PERC, Information/Configuration (link at top of the page), Foreign/Clear from the dropdown menu of Available Tasks.

Once both drives are showing Ready, then you can configure them.  What do you want to do with them?  Add them to an existing VD(s) or configure them together as a new VD?

Thanks so much Theflash1932 i want to add them to an existing VD(s) can that one be possible without loosing data?

Please reply me thanks

infact i have cleared the foreign but now advise me beause i want to add to an existing VD, do i need to first create a new VD or there is another option of doing this, second won't i loose data if i add to an existing VD, the current one is confogured on raid 5, and they are 4 HDDs and i have added 2 HDD making them 6 HDD, i need your advise

thanks

and another thing i have only one VD created for the 4 HDD in order for me to expand do i need to create another VD for the 2 HHD and how do i link them together?

thanks so much but when i go through that process in don't see the new HDD that added there because they are on connector connector 1 and the other 4 HDD are on connector 0, i only see one connector, and also through more right on the connectors,

because the 4 HDD are on connector 0 and the 2 are on connector 1, is there any problem with that? t

thanks

i hope you have see those images on that link

Hi,

Since the original drives are SAS disks, you will not be able to mix them together in a same VD. A rule of thumb for the PERC controllers is that you are unable to use both SATA and SAS drives in a same virtual disk.

There are no issues with having the hard drives on a seperate connector, you would still be able to create a new array with the hard drives.

Thanks.

DC Lim

Dell | Social Outreach Services - Enterprise

Please follow @DellCaresPro on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DellCaresPro

this is what i see, the connectors

connector 0 has the first 4 HDD and connector 1 has the new HDDhttp://en.community.dell.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-discussions-components-files/906/0830.Doc1.pdf

so that means that i create a different VD for the additional drives and create them on RAID 1 or 0?

thanks

ok thanks let me do that i will let you know on the progress