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PowerEdge + Linux Help

Greetings all,

I have a poweredge 1600SC with a single channel U160 Raid controller (with 143GB x 3 hot swappable SCSI hd). I am running redhat 9 on this machine. My problem is im running out of space and want to add and additional 2 SCSI hard disk with the same capacity. What do i do? Since it is hot swappable do i just shut down the machine install the 2 hard disk and restart? or are there some configuration needed to be done to it.

Thank you for your time.

Regards,
MC02 (newbie)

jmckinney2

If you are currently using a single drive, and have two empty bays, you can certainly install new drives in the empty spaces.

Before you do ANYTHING else, back up your data.

You will need to add the drives to your existing container in the Array Management utility, which you can access either from the RAID BIOS at startup or through the web-based server management tool that Dell publishes for Red Hat systems. You can download that tool here:

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/type.aspx?c=us&cs=_84&l=en&s=slg&SystemID=PWE_PNT_XEO_1600SC&category=0&os=LN90&osl=en&deviceid=2331&devlib=36

You should be able to migrate your single drive container to a RAID 0 or RAID 5 container using all three drives. I don't recommend using RAID 0, since the loss of one drive will mean the loss of all of your data.

Once you've done that, You should end up with a bunch of free space on your disk device, and you can create and mount a new filesystem.

Jason

mc02

ASKER

Thanks Jason for reply,

I actually have 3 SCSI hard disk already installed. I have 3 empty bays left. Ill be placing 2 additional hard disk with the same capacity.
I currently set the RAID to RAID 5. I used the Array Management Utility, turn the new hard disks online and intialized them.
I still can not see the new hard disks on my server therefore i can not mount it. What can i do? Do i need to format it after initialisation?

Thank you for you time.

Regards,
MC02

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jmckinney2

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mc02

ASKER

Hey Jason,

Made a blunder outta my server. One of my staff accidentally cleared the configuration on the PERC now it wont boot properly. Error read "No logical drive". I took ur advice and backed up on DLT tapes. Is there anyway to restore my server back without having to reformat everything and restoring it from the DLT tapes?

Regards
MC