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PE r510 w/ 8 2terabit drives
We just purchased an r510 with 8 2 tb drives. Our intent was to have the OS (windows server 3003 r2 w/sp2) on one 100 gb partition and the rest of the storage on another partition. Well, live and learn about the > 2 terabit limit..... Any way, I created 1 vd for 2 of the disks using raid 1, and another vd using the rest of the disks in raid 5. got the os installed and now aI'm wondering if i'm going to have a problem here. I should have gotten this server with 2 internal drives for the os, but we didn't and now I'm trying to figure out the best way to do this with what I got.
We will use this server to store all of our users' personal network folders. Any advice will be appreciated.
Dev Mgr
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September 15th, 2010 20:00
First off I'd go with raid 6 for a bit more reliability than raid 5, unless you have a very solid backup plan in place.
I do see 2 alternatives to your current setup:
- wipe the current raid config, create a raid 6, but make a virtual disk on there that's 100GB or so, then (once in the OS and after installing openmanage) create a 2nd virtual disk for the leftover space. It'll be on the same raid 6. You wouldn't ever be able to grow the raid 6 anymore, but you're already maxed out on the number of drives that fit in that server anyway, so that's not really an issue
- opt to use Windows 2008 x64 or 2008 R2, go into the bios, enable UEFI, create a single full size raid 6 virtual disk and install Windows on there (I'd suggest to create a partition for just the OS of maybe 100GB, and then a 2nd partition for the rest of the disk). 2008 x64 and 2008 R2 (only available in x64) can both boot with a UEFI instead of a bios and therefor can boot to a disk over 2TB. Your R510 has the option to change from a bios to a UEFI to accommodate this option.
jonesj
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September 16th, 2010 06:00
We don't have Windows 2008 at this time, so I'm stuck with Windows 2003. I do have 32 bit and 64 bit editions of Windows 2003 R2 emterprise, if that makes any difference. However, I'm somewhat confused now. If I use raid 6, I need to use at least 4 of the disks and then the Dell Utility dvd tells me I can't use a vd greate than 2 tb I can't make a 100gb vd in raid 6, unless I'm completely missing something here..... and thanks for your response. I look forward to the next reply.
Dev Mgr
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September 16th, 2010 09:00
To use a disk over 2TB the disk has to have a GPT partition table. To boot to a GPT disk you cannot use a bios; instead you need a UEFI. Your server does support EUFI, but Microsoft didn't introduce support for UEFI till Windows 2008 x64.
If you go into the bios of the PERC, you pick your drives and under advanced I think you can select to make the virtual disk less than the max. Here you select 100GB or so, and let it create it. Then you boot to the Windows 2003 CD (or the server installation DVD) and install 2003 on this 100GB virtual disk. The rest of the space on the raid 6 can then be used to create a second virtual disk for the max size.