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shanghui

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Converting a SAS single drive ML350 to a RAID1 mirror with another identical drive

I have a brand new ML350 with a SAS drive, preinstalled with SBS2011.
The server is spec'd with a second identical SAS drive, but the array was setup with only one drive (that is preinstalled with SBS2011), while the second drive was not configured.
For reasons that we needed the server up and running asap, the server was setup with a single drive (rather than recreating the array and losing the preinstalled SBS2011 setup).
We now have time to set the server to Mirror between those drives (change from single drive to a RAID1 mirror) - Can that be done without wiping and reinstalling?
Thanks!
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Neil Russell
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If you have hp's array configuration utility installed, open it up and see what it reports. You may have a raid 1 configured with only 1 disk. If so, you may be able to add the other disk to the array.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/software-management/acumatrix/index.html

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shanghui

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Hi gmbaxter,
It does have HP's ACU and was indeed setup with an array with one drive, and another unused drive. Was hoping to find out how (or if possible) to add the unused drive to the existing array as a mirror without wiping current array with single drive.
You can only add a mirror if you have a battery backed write cache module, in effect you are doing a RAID level migration from RAID 0 (the single disk with the RAID metadata on it) to a two disk array. That can be done on the fly without data loss and without downtime. You can tell from the ACU whether you have a battery or not. If you tell us what controller it lists in the ACU we can confirm part numbers etc for battery - about $100, does need downtime to fit, but only about 5 minutes. Lots of generations of ML350 so the G number from the front will help too.
The ACU will let you mirate raid levels, but as andyalder says you'll probably need the BBWC module for the raid card.

Once/If you have it, open ACU, select the raid contoller from a drop down list - it should only show ones listed in your system, then open the wizards tab and "Migrate Logical Drive". This should give you options of raid levels to move to.

I recently used this in a DL380 to move from a 2 disk R1 to 4 disk R10 with no downtime.
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Just use the RAID mirror utility in the OS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xcpOHt9k7Q
Thanks pgm554. That's a very handy tutorial. Would prefer to use hardware RAID - was included (and spec'd) in the server purchased.
Thanks guys. Tried ACU but didn't let me do it. No option to select. Lost the partition in the end and had to reinstall the server - was newly setup so no big deal, just wasted another several hours on reinstalling it. Seems like imaging it prior would have saved lots of time.