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mspencer1000

1 Rookie

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10 Posts

27

April 16th, 2024 02:59

Perc H730P Need to grow the Raid5 with larger drives.

I have a Power Edge R440 In Open manage under Storage/perc H730P adapter (Embedded)/Connector 0 (RAID)/Enclosure (Backplane)/Physical Disks. I see 5 drives, 2446.62GB i believe to be a mirrored C drive. and 3 893.75 GB drives i expect to be the RAID 5 for D:

They are all showing good, but i need to grow these drives to 3 TB drives for just the RAID 5. so how do i swap in the 3ea 3 TB drives? I did this once before with help from Dell it was long ago so i wanted to see if this was a possibility now with this controller and drives. 

These were the steps as i remember.

1. in Open Manage, select one of the RAID 5 drives and switch to Blink to identify the physical drive from the front. 

2. in own manage, select the drive you just identified and switch it to offline.

3. Pull the hot-swap drive and slide in the new 3 TB drive.

4. the drive will be rebuilt.

5. once the drive is done rebuilding and back online do the same to the other 2 drives one at a time to make sure each new drive it fully back online before pulling and replacing the next drive.

6. Once all 3 drives are swapped out with the 3ea 3 TB drives we can grow the virtual drive.

7. this is where my memory is lacking, do i do that in the OS? or on the controller?

the issue is we can't bring down the server for very long if at all, it's in a surgical business and any downtime has to be scheduled way, way ahead of time. they are running out of space and if we can do this without rebooting that would be perfect. 

your guidance is much appreciated. 

DELL-Erman O

Moderator

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2.3K Posts

April 16th, 2024 08:47

Hello,

Yes you can remember very well, it seems generally okay. 

Here's a simplified and improved version of the instructions for expanding a RAID array 

 

Before you begin back up your data: This is crucial in case of any unexpected issues during the expansion process.

  1. Install the new drives: Physically install the new hard drives into the available slots on your server chassis.
  2. Launch OpenManage: Open Dell's OpenManage Server Administrator software.
  3. Locate the RAID array: Navigate to the "Storage" menu and find the PERC H710 adapter. Expand it to see the "Physical Disks" and "Virtual Disks" sections.
  4. Reconfigure the virtual disk:
    • In the "Virtual Disks" section, locate the array you want to expand.
    • Right-click on the array and select "Reconfigure" from the menu.
  5. Add new disks:
    • In the reconfiguration wizard, follow the prompts to select the newly added hard drives.
    • Confirm the RAID level remains the same (e.g., RAID 5, RAID 6).
  6. Review and confirm:
    • Verify that the information displayed is accurate, including the new size of the array.
    • Click "Finish" to begin the reconfiguration process.
  7. Monitor the progress:
    • OpenManage will display the reconfiguration progress as a percentage. This might take several hours depending on the size of your array.
  8. Verify the expansion:
    • Once complete, check the "Virtual Disks" section again to confirm the increased capacity of the array.

Expanding the partition in Windows (if needed):

If you're using Windows Server, you might need to extend the partition to utilize the newly added space within the RAID.

  1. Launch Server Manager: Open the Server Manager application.
  2. Open Disk Management: Under the "Storage" section, select "Disk Management."
  3. Locate the partition: Identify the disk or partition where the unallocated space resides.
  4. Extend the volume: Right-click on the partition and choose "Extend Volume."
  5. Follow the prompts: Select the amount of space to add and confirm the changes within Disk Management.

Important notes: There might be a slight performance impact on your server during the reconfiguration process. Expanding a RAID array carries some risk, so having a recent backup is essential.

 

Other that that there is a a video to explain via PERC  How To Perform Online Capacity Expansion for Dell PERC | Dell Iceland

 

Hope that helps!

mspencer1000

1 Rookie

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10 Posts

April 16th, 2024 17:30

Thank you, but i have a question, so it seems like i missed something. can i have mixed-size drives in a RAID5? it sounds like that is what you are saying. I currently have 3 893.75 GB drives in my RAID 5 VD. if i add 3ea 3TB drives to that array will that work? i understood that they all had to be the same size drives?

THank you for your help

DELL-Chris H

Moderator

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8.6K Posts

April 16th, 2024 18:56

Mspencer1000,

 

To simply answer your question, yes you can have mixed sized drives in a raid 5, but there are stipulations. In your case you have the 3 894GB drives in a Raid 5, if you simply just add the 3 3TB drives to the existing raid 5, making it a 6 drive raid 5 with 3tb and 894gb drives, then the recognized drive size of the Raid 5 members would be capped at 894GB, as it will make the 3tb appear as 894 in the raid. Now what I believe you are wanting to do is to expand the raid 5 size by replacing the 894GB drives with the 3 TB ones, which you can do and is called an Online Capacity Expansion, as described here and by Erman.. 

 

Let me know if this helps.

 

 

 

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