Install or upgrade to the latest OpenManage Server Administrator if you aren't on this yet (5.4.0 is the latest off my head).

This shouldn't take a reboot to install.

The steps would be something like this:

- back up all your data on the server (in case something goes wrong)
- install/upgrade to OMSA 5.4.0 or later with the storage option (custom install as I don't think the storage option is selected by default)
- verify that OMSA is happy with all the driver and firmware versions -> upgrade those it says are out of date
- if updates were made to any drivers or firmwares/bioses, do another backup
- insert the new drive if you haven't already
- open the server administrator (webpage interface usually has a shortcut on the desktop, or open a webbrowser and go to https://servername:1311.
- go to storage and then the perc5i or perc6i
- go to virtual drives
- in the dropdown select "reconfigure"
- on the left side select the 3 pre-existing drives and the 4th new drive
- follow the wizard
- now you need to be patient. This reconfiguration can take a day or more, but the system can be up during this (but I'd recommend to do it in a weekend to lessen the impact on your users)
- once this is reconfigured, your "Disk 0" in disk management will show the new extra space at the end of the disk.

Now you need to decide what you want to do with the extra space:
- create a new partition (e.g. E-drive (or whichever your next available drive letter is)
- extend the last partition on "Disk 0" using diskpart and the instructions in Microsoft kb article 325590. This last partition cannot be the system/boot disk or have a swap file on it (see the MS KB article)
- use a 3rd party application like Acronis Disk Director to resize all the partitions (including the C-drive) as needed.

thats great - thanks for the explanation

 

Nigel

Is there any way to expand through the RAID BIOS, or must it be done through OMSA?

OMSA only as far as I know.

There is an OMSA for Linux too (Red Hat and SuSE only though if I'm not mistaken).