RAID-1 RAID-5 adding drive to Virtual Disk for Storage Capacity
I have a Dell 1900 in a PERC5/i controller with 5 drives.. Here's the layout:
On connector 0: I have disks 0:0 to 0:3 (4 total obviously
On Connector 1: I have disk 1:4
Virtual disk 0 contains Drives 0:0 and 1:4 in a RAID 1
Virtual disk 1 contains Drives 0:1 to 0:3 in a RAID-5
VDisk 0 contains the OS (Server 2k3 STD, 29.3g usable)
VDisk 1 contains the domain data & user profiles (we use roaming) and has a total of 136G
I desperately need to add storage space to the VDisk 1 as i'm down to minimal space due to some new employees. Yes, i've sanitized Mp3, ITunes & Video files.
I'm presuming, that all I would need to do is power off the server, install the 6th SAS drive, power on, go into the System Administrator and select RECONFIGURE and add the drive to the VDisk 1, adding on my 76G drive in the process. Yes, I have several usable backups and will have a USB disk with additional backup capabilities.
1. Is it possible to add the drive?
Since this will be the last drive that I can add, I understand completely that I'll have to re-install 4 new drives, blow away the RAID-5, and restore from backups. Not fun, and i've admonished my "consultant" on why he used smaller drives that I requested.
This is a 2nd posting on this, my first post was woefully inadaquate on information.
On connector 0: I have disks 0:0 to 0:3 (4 total obviously
On Connector 1: I have disk 1:4
Virtual disk 0 contains Drives 0:0 and 1:4 in a RAID 1
Virtual disk 1 contains Drives 0:1 to 0:3 in a RAID-5
VDisk 0 contains the OS (Server 2k3 STD, 29.3g usable)
VDisk 1 contains the domain data & user profiles (we use roaming) and has a total of 136G
I desperately need to add storage space to the VDisk 1 as i'm down to minimal space due to some new employees. Yes, i've sanitized Mp3, ITunes & Video files.
I'm presuming, that all I would need to do is power off the server, install the 6th SAS drive, power on, go into the System Administrator and select RECONFIGURE and add the drive to the VDisk 1, adding on my 76G drive in the process. Yes, I have several usable backups and will have a USB disk with additional backup capabilities.
1. Is it possible to add the drive?
Since this will be the last drive that I can add, I understand completely that I'll have to re-install 4 new drives, blow away the RAID-5, and restore from backups. Not fun, and i've admonished my "consultant" on why he used smaller drives that I requested.
This is a 2nd posting on this, my first post was woefully inadaquate on information.
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If you cannot add disks dynamically how do they justify that PERC stands for Poweredge Expandable Raid Controller?
>SysExpert is correct, you cannot add drives to existing raids and see the extra space as part of a file system.
Fuck; that's exactly why I bought it because the marketing literature claimed it *was* possible to expand the filesystem on the fly; does this mean that the other claims are also invalid? Can I trust my data on a Dell in future?
Fuck; that's exactly why I bought it because the marketing literature claimed it *was* possible to expand the filesystem on the fly; does this mean that the other claims are also invalid? Can I trust my data on a Dell in future?
I know it is frustrating, but please watch your language.
I certainly can't give you the logic behind their choice of a name.
But, you can expand the amount of disks and available space, you just cannot expand the individual files systems except under certain conditions.
Here is a paper that describes how you would use the PERC features if using linux;
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/power/en/ps1q03_michael
Here is how you would do it in windows if you had prepared in advance by installing Dell's array manager software and were using virtual drives.
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/svradmin/2.0/en/ug/storage.htm#wp1047309
I should have asked if it was installed, but I assumed that it wasn't.
I certainly can't give you the logic behind their choice of a name.
But, you can expand the amount of disks and available space, you just cannot expand the individual files systems except under certain conditions.
Here is a paper that describes how you would use the PERC features if using linux;
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/power/en/ps1q03_michael
Here is how you would do it in windows if you had prepared in advance by installing Dell's array manager software and were using virtual drives.
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/svradmin/2.0/en/ug/storage.htm#wp1047309
I should have asked if it was installed, but I assumed that it wasn't.
you can either add an additional RAID, but you have no slots available.
You could also possibly use the single drive as an addition partition, but it may not solve you data issues, unless you start moving users over to the new drive.
SO the backup restore sounds best to me at this stage, but maybe someone else will have more info.
I hope this helps !