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March 6th, 2014 07:00
Adding MD1200 to PE R420
I need to add more storage to a PE R420. I use this server for backing up other servers using Arcserve. The additional storage would primarily be used for backup storage in a Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape process.
I am considering using an MD1200/PERC H800 combination with (6) 4 TB SAS near-line drives setup in a RAID 10.
Down the road, when I need to add storage capacity by adding additional drives to the MD1200, what are my options? Let's say I add (4) more 4 TB drives. Would I be able to add this capacity to the existing RAID 10 and add to existing volumes or create new volumes or would I have to create a 2nd RAID 10 with a separate volume(s)?
Thanks.
Dev Mgr
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March 6th, 2014 19:00
One correction to Sam's post. As per the PERC H810 manual (as you have a 12th generation PowerEdge, this is the PERC you'd want to get for an MD1200/1220) on page 18, you cannot reconfigure a spanned raid set (raid 10, 50 and 60).
downloads.dell.com/.../poweredge-rc-h310_User%27s%20Guide_en-us.pdf
So you won't be able to expand a raid 10. Only raid 0 (not to be used for production data), 5 and 6 can be reconfigured to grow them.
The PERC H800 had the same limitations.
DELL-Sam L
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March 6th, 2014 10:00
Hello bhartung,
So if you start off with your setup of six 4TB drives in a raid 10 & then down the road you need to add more space you can use OMSA (Open Manage Server Administrator) & select the virtual disk & expand the virtual disk to use the new space that was added to the MD.
Now something to keep in mind that by doing an extension of your virtual disk is that it will slow your overall performance down a little bit. Also when you do an extend it is a low priority task, meaning that it may take a long time to complete. In addition to that if you have any power issues or any errors that happen on the MD1200 that it may stop the extension and once the issue is resolved you may have to start the extend from the beginning again.
The other way that you could add the space to your virtual disk in your MD 1200 is if you have a place to off load the data (example: another server, or NAS unit, etc) then you could destroy the virtual disk and then recreate the virtual disk with the correct size and then restore your data.
Please let us know if you have any other questions.