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28657
May 20th, 2014 19:00
NX200 with PERC S3 raid controller. Maximum drive size and configuration in raid 5.
This seems like a question that would be answered in the product manual, but I'm unable to find it. I have one drive in the current 1Tb raid 5 that is failing. The server is about 5 years old so i would like to replace all of the current 250Gb drives to increase the overall capacity.
Does anyone know the maximum drive and raid specifications for this configuration?
Can anyone direct me to documentation on updating all drives?
Thanks in advance for your assistance.
Knarf
DELL-Sam L
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May 21st, 2014 07:00
Hello Knarf,
With the NX200 you could get a 4 disk Raid 5 of either 2TB, 1TB, 500GB, or 250GB drive sizes. So you can upgrade to the max of 4x2TB drives for your NX200. Now you will need to replace the drives one at a time first. Once that is done then you will need to go into open manage and select the virtual disk & if you right click you should be able to expand the disk to use the free space. Now for your virtual disk you will not be able to expand it as it won’t be able to due to that virtual disk being an MBR disk.
Once the disk has been expanded then you will need to go into windows and expand the disk in windows disk management.
Please let us know if you have any other questions.
DELL-Sam L
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May 21st, 2014 12:00
Hello Knarf,
Yes the drives are hot swappable. You will want to check open manage to make sure that the rebuild completes before replacing the next drive. If you use Dell Open Manage it will tell you the location of the failed drive. you can also use open manage to blink the drive so that you know which drive that needs to be replaced.
Please let us know if you have any other questions.
Dev Mgr
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May 25th, 2014 19:00
This may indicate a 'broken' raid 5. This means it that part of the data at the 61% mark isn't repairable with the parity that's available.
The only solution in such a case is to run a separate back up of your data, then delete the raid 5, recreate it with the replacement drive and then restore your data.
This is an example why raid isn't a substitute for a backup, but just a way to help (significantly) lower the downtime over the complete run of the system's lifespan.
mwmatv
6 Posts
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May 21st, 2014 10:00
Just a couple more questions.
Are these drives hot swapable?
Is there documentation so that i can match the physical location of the of the degraded drive with the one reported by the software?
Thanks
Knarf
Dev Mgr
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May 22nd, 2014 08:00
One note about replacing the drives one at a time; be patient. Depending on the size of your current drives this can take multiple days (per drive). This is due to it just taking a while as well as the S-series PERC adapter.
mwmatv
6 Posts
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May 23rd, 2014 12:00
I just received new drives for the array. I replaced the failed drive with one of the new drives and expected the system to start a rebuild, but nothing happened. I connected through open manage and the system sees the new drive as a stand alone rather than trying to make it part of the raid. I dont see any way to encourage the rebuild either through the open manager or through the controller manger available during a reboot.
Thanks again for your assistance.
Dev Mgr
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May 24th, 2014 17:00
Make the replacement drive a hotspare. This should usually trigger the rebuild to start.
mwmatv
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May 25th, 2014 13:00
Making the replacement drive a hotspare did start the rebuild, however the rebuild always stalls at about 61%. I have left the array in this condition for 12 hours and it made no further progress. i pulled the drive back out and started it again. It still hangs at 61%. The drive lights show no show activity once it hangs, but open manager still indicates it's rebuilding. the original drives are 250GB and the replacement is 2TB. I plan to update all drives to 2TB one at a time once i am able to get the array fully rebuilt.
Thanks again for your help.