The best way? Buy an MD1000 with drives off the Dell Outlet store.

http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?c=us&cs=28&l=en&s=dfb&brandid=2805&fid=660

"The best way? Buy an MD1000 with drives off the Dell Outlet store.

http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?c=us&cs=28&l=en&s=dfb&brandid=2805&fid=660

"

pretend that's not an option... the drives have already been purchased, just need to be installed. i know that it won't work like an equalogic, so what would my best case scenario be?

So somebody purchased dell certified drives? But no MD1000? Adding MD1000 and the needed storage is the way best way here.

What is the current config? If you are pretty full on spindles already you have little to no options. Backup, make the change, re-cionfig the storage and restore.

"pretend that's not an option... the drives have already been purchased, just need to be installed. i know that it won't work like an equalogic, so what would my best case scenario be?"

On the bay right now.. Buy now's for well under $1K... For the ease of what you need to do this is a bargan. Heck sell it back off with the old drives when your done. Still depends on your current config and what drives you purchased and what your really wanting to accomplish though.

"pretend that's not an option... the drives have already been purchased, just need to be installed. i know that it won't work like an equalogic, so what would my best case scenario be?"

Shoot on ebay.. There some buy now's for well under $1K on blank MD1000's......

The for ease of doing what you need to do... This is a bargan.

Ooops sorry for the double post.. The first one didn't show up right away for me.

i think that might be the best way to go... thank you John, i will present that as an option.

PS: This assumes they have purchased Diskcopy and/or Snapshots with the MD3000i? This is all mute if they don't have at least diskcopy.

This will allow you to quickly block level copy everything to the new storage and reprovision it to the host(s). I'd generally reccomend leaving any existing storage is place and just letting the available storage size grow. Never bad to have extra storage available. At that point you can also gain some enclosure protection by creating routine block level copies to the other tray of drives.