Perc 710 Add physical disk to RAID 5 Virtual Disk and keep data

Question

I am thinking of setting up a 4 physical disk RAID 5 array on my new PowerEdge T320. This should give me enough space to last a long time. I will have two empty HD slots. If I need more space later, will I be able to add one or two additional physical disks without losing the data already on the virtual disk? If so, how? I did not see a way to do this in the Perc 710 manual.

Thanks,

Andrew

theflash1932 · Accepted Answer

Yes, it is 'doable' later.  This can't be done in the PERC BIOS, but it can be done in OMSA (OpenManage Server Administrator) from within the OS. One thing to keep in mind is Windows 2TB 'boot disk' limit on BIOS-enabled systems.  If you plan to put 4x4TB disks in a RAID 10, that ~8TB 'disk' must be converted to GPT and BIOS set to UEFI as the boot mode.

theflash1932 · Answer

It is called Online Capacity Expansion ... it allows you to add disks to a [non-nested] RAID array to grow the size of the array. This is designed to be done on the fly - while online and without affecting current data, but, as always, a backup is always recommended.

How large are your disks? What OS?

DAndrew3 · Answer

I am thinking of 4 4tb disks. The OS is Windows Server 2012 Essentials.

Does one use the Perc H710 bios to do the expansion, or OpenManage (which

I have not installed).

I do not need to do an expansion now, but wanted to be sure it was doable later if (when) I need more space.

Thanks,

Andrew

DAndrew3 · Answer

Thanks.

I have a 500gb raid 1 array with the OS on one partition, and 300+gb data partition (There are also small OEM and Recovery partitions on that array). I am not planning on changing that. I will put the four 4gb drives in slots 3-6, leaving 7&8 open for future expansion (I have an 8 bay 3.5in configuration). If the two additional slots are not enough I can always back up the large drive to a large NAS array and restore it on a new internal array, but I doubt I would ever have that much data... I think the 4, with over 11tb usable should last a long time. (I am planning on RAID 5, not 10).

Please let me know if I am missing anything..

Thanks again,

Andrew

theflash1932 · Answer

You should be good then.  (Sorry ... RAID 10 was a typo - I meant RAID 5.  In fact, you cannot add disks in this manner (OCE) with RAID 10/50/60.)

PowerEdge HDD/SCSI/RAID

Perc 710 Add physical disk to RAID 5 Virtual Disk and keep data

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