Adding additional drives to MD3200I

Question

I have an MD3200i with 4 drives in Raid 5. We have bought 2 more 600GB drives and want to add them in to gain some additional space. We plan on adding another Server to our VMware 5.0 Server.

How is this done?

We are running Raid Controller Module Firmware 07.84.44.60

Very new to this type of setup.

I am going to make sure I have a backup of all VMwares and the SAn.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Ken

DELL-Sam L · Answer

Hello Ken,

Here is a link to the user guide for the MD3200i, & if you look on page 141 it explains the process of how to add the drives to your virtual disk and gain the space. ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/Common/powervault-md3200i_Owner%27s%20Manual_en-us.pdf

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Dev Mgr · Answer

Note that adding drives to the existing raid set is very time consuming and during this process you may experience a performance hit (depends on how much IO you are doing), but it does work without downtime.

I'd suggest to start this process later in the afternoon on a Friday, assuming the weekend is a low IO time for you.

Once the disks have been added to the raid set, you can use the extra space to grow existing virtual disks, or create new virtual disks (which could then be assigned to 1 or more new servers if desired).

rodeoboy · Answer

Thanks for the information.  Can I add both drives at the same time or Do I need to perform that operation for each drive? Sincerely, Ken

DELL-Sam L · Answer

Hello Ken, You can add both drives at the same time & then do the operation on expanding your virtual disks. Please let us know if you have any other questions.

PowerVault

Adding additional drives to MD3200I

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