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8535
January 11th, 2005 17:00
PowerEdge 6650 - Upgrade Drives in RAID 5 Array
We have a PowerEdge 6650 that is being used as a SQL server. It has a split backplane with a RAID 1 Mirror (2) x 18GB 10K RPM drives for our OS (Win2K Server) on channel 0 and a RAID 5 Array (3) x 18GB 15K RPM drives on channel 1 for our SQL data store.
We're almost out of space on the RAID 5 array and I would like to swap out the drives with (3) 146GB 10K RPM drives.
What would be the easiest (and safest) procedure to do this?
Our controller card is a PERC 3/dc
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
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barhampa
718 Posts
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January 12th, 2005 03:00
EMademlis
6 Posts
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February 10th, 2005 13:00
Hello,
The most easy way to do this is to use Symantec's Ghost 7.5.0 on a bootdisk with network support and an off-line partitioning tool like PartitionMagic 4.0 or 5.0. You can not use PartitionMagic 8.0 or 7.0 or 6.0 because there is a limitation into their software for the server versions of Windows! Simply, because they have another product called Volume Manager, which is much more expensive of course.
The idea is to "image" your existing logical drive which is composed by 3x18Gb disks, then replace the 3 18Gb hard drives by 3 or more new ones, recreate a new RAID-5 logical drive and finally ghost back the partition(s). Since Windows "sees" virtual drives on the next reboot everything will be OK, because every logical component will be there; the only difference will be the size of the partitions that the "new" logical drive contains. I have done the same operation many times and everything went fine. You don't have to worry about anything if you do each step correctly!
It is recommended to use GigaBit network cards, so the whole process will go faster with a minimum of downtime! Of course it is better to do it late at night or during the weekend.
1.Boot the server using the Ghost MultiCast Client Bootdisk and save the image of the entire logical drive on a network drive.2.Power off the server, detach and remove the physical drives from the PERC controller, boot up the system and clear the controller's configuration of CHANNEL 1.
3.Attach the new drives to the PERC controller, boot up the server, enter the PERC's configuration utility and create a new RAID-5 Logical Drive (LD) on CHANNEL 1.
4.Boot up the server using the PartitionMagic bootdisk and create your partitions on the new LD.
5.Boot the system with Symantec's Ghost 7.5 Bootdisk and "ghost" back your data partition from the Ghost image file using the partition-to-partition method.
6.Finally, reboot the system and let it stabilize for a few minutes before attempting to log in. Windows will prompt you to reboot because the partitions' size has changed. Everything else should be fine because every component is there the only difference is that the LD is bigger than the previous one.
All the best & Good luck.
csbayles
2 Posts
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February 10th, 2005 18:00