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8799
Powervault disk config options
Apologies if this has been asked before, but I'm a powervault newbie.
I've just bought an NF500 with 6* SATA 750GB drives with two Perc 6/i controllers. I'd like it configured with a small c: drive (say 100GB) and the rest as one large data partition, running under RAID5. We're running Windows Storage Server R3 (65 bit).
Currently its configured as a single disk group, with two <2TB Virtual disks, both RAID5, across the single disk group. On the 1st VD there is the c: and a d: drive, and then the 2nd VD contains a single e: drive.
If it is possilbe to do what I want, can the system be reconfigured without blowing away the OS, ie can I resive VD 1 and then create VD 2 from the remaing free space?
Thanks in advance
grm139
172 Posts
1
January 21st, 2009 08:00
Your comment is correct, you can create a RAID 5 volume with all 6 drives and then a VD on top of that that only uses 100GB. The PERC controller will only show a 100GB volume to the OS, how the disk is built is hidden from Windows. The only problem is that you will need to reinstall the OS for this. When a VD is created it cannot be resized.
The 100GB can be used to install the OS without any problems but, you may need to install the OS first and them create the second larger than 2TB VD. The presence of a >2TB volume may present some problem for Win2003 installation, even if it is not the boot volume.
BenHoward
3 Posts
1
January 22nd, 2009 09:00
Thanks, that worked a treat. I had to use DiskPart once the disk was created to set it to GPT, the option wasn't available within the UI.
BenHoward
3 Posts
0
January 21st, 2009 06:00
okay, apologies if this is a stupid question, but I want to make sure I've totally understood my options.
When a VD is created, it asks for the total amount of space - can I not say 100GB, and call this diskpart1 (and hence assign it to c: later). Then on creating the 2nd VD, just use the rest of the space and convert to GPT. In this scenario, I'll have two RAID 5 VDs spread across the 6 disks (which is what I've got at the moment, it's just that I'd like to alter the sizes of each VD somewhat)
Thanks in advance
Dev Mgr
9.3K Posts
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January 21st, 2009 06:00
You can't boot to a virtual disk (vd) that's larger than 2TB. This is a limitation of using a bios in a computer (pretty much every computer since the late 70'/early 80s except for the newer Apple computers and Itanium based servers).
So creating a 6x750GB raid 5 virtual disk with a 100GB partition for C and the rest as D won't be possible.
You could consider:
- 2 x 750GB in a raid 1 for C (and maybe another partition as desired)
- 4 x 750GB in a raid 5 for the large disk -> After you have Windows see the disk and initialize it, but before creating any partition on it, right click the disk (not the partitionable area) and select the "convert to GPT" option. After that you can make a partition over 2TB (but the disk is no longer bootable on any computer using a bios).