Adding add'l RAID config

Question

Good Morning - I currently have a R710 w/PERC6i installed.  I have disk 0 & 1 setup as RAID1 since that is the best this card can do.. bummer.   We have since filled the bay with new drives and I would like to RAID these as well.  I am used to the easy setup of RAID 5 so I have some questions about RAID 1.  Here are my questions: Can I just configure the new disks (2-7) RAID1, if so, is that done via the Server Administrator upon bootup?  I have tried booting with Server Administrator CD but when it comes up it does not show the original virtual disk of 0/1 on a RAID 1, it looks as though nothing was ever set up.  But when I look within the application Server Administrator, it shows that my virtual disks are set correctly.   If this is not done via Server Admin cd, how can it be accomplished?  Just shoot me the documentation link, since I can not find exactly what I am looking for. Booting to the Server Admin CD will allow me to select RAID 1 for all disks ( I am sure this will wipe out my data on the existing virtual drive).  But this brought up another question, if I were to select the option RAID 1 and select all disks, will it take each disk and mirror it appropriately (i.e. 0 to 1, 2 to 3, 4 to 5 and 6 to 7) or does it do something else to the disks? Just looking for advice on the best practice of setting up what I need to do with the PERC6i and adding additional storage. 1) Ability to add more storage space and RAID 1 each of the pairs of drives without having to rebuild the server 2) If I have to rebuild the server, will the RAID 1, select all disks option in setting up virtual drive actually mirror 0 to 1, 2 to 3, 4 to 5 and 6 to 7? Thank you for your help.

Dev Mgr · Answer

If you indeed have a PERC6 in the server, you can easily do raid 5.

The PERC6i can do raid 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60 (source: user guide page 21)<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>. You may want to check this user guide as it also explains about what raid levels support expansion (not all do).

As for raid 1; this is a mirror. A mirror can only have 2 drives. You could run a raid 10 though (multiple mirrors that have a stripe across them).

Some information on raid levels is available in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nested_RAID_levels).

TCLiven · Answer

Thanks for your quick reply.  I do not get the RAID 5 option when configuring the virtual disks, only RAID 0 and RAID 1 is available it says.  I apologize it is a SAS not PERC.

Dev Mgr · Answer

If you have the SAS5iR or SAS6iR, you're limited to raid 0 or raid 1 only. The SAS6iR is limited to just 2 virtual disks. The online manual for the SAS5iR doesn't mention the maximum number of virtual disks, but I believe it only supports 1 virtual disk.

You may want to see if your salesrep can get you a quote on the price of a PERC6i for your system. This gives you what it sounds like you need.

PowerEdge HDD/SCSI/RAID

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