Yes, you can do this, but you can't use the CTRL-R BIOS utility. You have to initiate this with OMSA. What OS are you running? If you aren't using an OS on which OMSA is supported, you can boot to an OMSA Live [Support] image and initiate it from there.

In OMSA, you want to go to Storage, PERC, Virtual Disks, then Reconfigure from the dropdown menu of Available Tasks for the RAID 5.

Feature only by Windows and using Dell OpenManage

1. Make sure a hard drive is available to add to the array, and that it is either already blanked, or that you don’t care about any existing data on it.
2. Open the Dell OpenManage Server Administrator, navigate to the Storage node, and find the newly added available drive.  Make sure it has a state of “Ready.”
3. Still under the Storage node, click on the Virtual Disks entry.  For the RAID volume to which the new drive is going to be added, click the drop-down under Tasks and select Reconfigure…
4. On the Reconfigure Virtual Disk X (Step 1 of 3) screen, click the check box next to the new disk to add to the array.
5. On the Reconfigure Virtual Disk X (Step 2 of 3) screen, click the radial next to the type of RAID array you are expanding
   (RAID5 in this case).
   
   
   
6. Click Finish on the final Reconfigure Virtual Disk X (Step 3 of 3) screen to begin reconstructing the RAID array with the additional disk.  The Virtual Disk State will show “Reconstructing” during this process.  On a RAID5 volume with 300 GB SAS disks, going from 3 to 4 disks, the reconstruction took approximately 6 hours.
7. Once the RAID reconstruction is complete, the disk volume in Windows must still be expanded into the newly available space.  In Windows Server 2008 R2, this can be done directly from the Disk Management interface in the Server Manager, using the Extend Volume command.
   
   

This looks like exactly the process we may need to follow. Thanks for sharing Alison.

Could I check if you or anyone can confirm, that while this is process is happening, can the server remain on with access to the data working? (Appreciate it may not be desirable)

Thanks,

Martin.

Did you manage to do expand the virtual disk? I am doing it right now and am a little nervous as it's an Exchange server and cannot afford to lose it.

I have a Virtual Disk with 3 disks and i have now added another disk and am trying to expand the volume.

Hi guys, i'm actually in charge of doing this VD expansion by adding 2 disk to a RAID6, did you managed to do it during production and without data loss ? Thanks

Running this process right now on a production server. No issues. All of my virtual machines, which live on the volume being expanded, are still up and running.

I'm trying to do the same, but I want to make sure I'm not going to lose my current RAID5 and lose all data.

Do you have an update, Chris-BSS?

Reconfiguration of virtual disk will not have any impact on data on the virtual disk. There will be performance issue during the procedure. Can you share the PERC controller and how you are planning to reconfigure the virtual disk.

It is good practice and recommended to backup your data before carrying out any such maintenance tasks to handle any unforeseen behavior.