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Article Number: 000175364

Reconfiguration Of virtual disks on the PowerEdge RAID Controller 6 (PERC6)

Summary: This article provides information on how to reconfigure virtual disks on the PowerEdge RAID Controller 6 (PERC6)

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Article Content

Symptoms

This article provides information on how to reconfigure virtual disks on the PowerEdge RAID Controller 6  (PERC6)
 

Issue:

An online virtual disk can be reconfigured in ways that expand its capacity and/or change its RAID level.
 
Note: Reconfiguring Virtual Disks typically impacts disk performance until the reconfiguration operation is complete. 
Note: Spanned virtual disks such as RAID 10, 50, and 60 cannot be reconfigured.

 

Online Capacity Expansion (OCE) can be done in two ways. If there is a single virtual disk in a disk group and free space is available, the virtual disk´s capacity can be expanded within that free space. If a virtual disk is created and it does not use the maximum size of the disk group, free space is available. Free space is also available when a disk group´s physical disks are replaced by larger disks using the Replace Member feature. A virtual disk's capacity can also be expanded by performing an OCE operation to add more physical disks.

RAID Level Migration (RLM) refers to changing a virtual disk´s RAID level. Both RLM and OCE can be done at the same time so that a virtual disk can simultaneously have its RAID level changed and its capacity increased. When a RLM/OCE operation is complete, a reboot is not required. For a list of RLM/OCE possibilities, see table below. The source RAID level column indicates the virtual disk RAID level before the RLM/OCE and the target RAID level column indicates the RAID level after the operation has completed.
 
Note: If the controller already contains the maximum number of virtual disks, you cannot perform a RAID level migration or capacity expansion on any virtual disk. 
Note: The controller changes the write cache policy of all virtual disks undergoing a RLM/OCE to Write-Through until the RLM/OCE is complete.

 

RAID-Level Migration
Source RAID Level Target RAID Level Required Number of Physical Disks (Beginning) Number of Physical Disks (End) Capacity Expansion Possible Description
RAID 0 RAID 0 1 2 or more Yes Increases capacity
RAID 0 RAID 1 1 2 No Converts non-redundant virtual disk into a mirrored virtual disk by adding one disk.
RAID 0 RAID 5 1 or more 3 or more Yes At least one drive needs to be added for distributed parity data.
RAID 0 RAID 6 1 or more 4 or more Yes At least two drives need to be added for dual distributed parity data.
RAID 1 RAID 0 2 2 or more Yes Removes redundancy while increasing capacity.
RAID 1 RAID 5 2 3 or more Yes Maintains redundancy while doubling capacity.
RAID 1 RAID 6 2 4 or more Yes Two drives are required to be added for distributed parity data.
RAID 5 RAID 0 3 or more 3 or more Yes Converts to a non-redundant virtual disk and reclaims disk space used for distributed parity data.
RAID 5 RAID 5 3 4 or more Yes Increases capacity by adding disks.
RAID 5 RAID 6 3 or more 4 or more Yes At least one drive needs to be added for dual distributed parity data.
RAID 6 RAID 0 4 or more 4 or more Yes Converting to a non-redundant virtual disk and reclaiming disk space used for distributed parity data.
RAID 6 RAID 5 4 or more 4 or more Yes Removing one set of parity data and reclaiming disk space used for it.
RAID 6 RAID 6 4 5 or more Yes Increases capacity by adding disks.

 

Note: The total number of physical disks in a disk group cannot exceed 64. 
Note: You cannot perform RAID level migration and expansion on RAID levels 10, 50, and 60.

Cause

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Resolution

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Article Properties

Affected Product

Servers

Last Published Date

29 Nov 2021

Version

4

Article Type

Solution

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