How do you configure a Dell server Hot Spare

In OMSA (OpenManage Server Administrator), go to Storage, PERC, Virtual Disks, and Assign Dedicated Hot-spare from the dropdown menu of Available Tasks for your RAID 5.

You can do this from the CTRL-R utility as well, but it is better than you have and use OMSA for this type of thing.

Better yet, to a Reconfigure and convert your 3-disk RAID 5 to a 4-disk RAID 6.

After doing that it states there are no available disks to be used as a hot spare

that sounds like you just added it to drive pool instead of spare

I didn't add it that's the way Del configured it

Does the drive show as Ready? Is it already a hot-spare?

yes ready, no not a hot spare

Well, you didn't need to go that route, but whatever:

- LCC is not required - it can be done in the CTRL-R utility or in OMSA
- OMSA should be installed whenever possible on any Dell server you manage
- Reconfiguring RAID should not have been necessary
- Reinstalling the OS should not have been necessary

The Dell tech support did it, so I certainly wasn't going to question them.

in addition, I tried to do it through OMSA as you suggested and the option to convert it to a Hot Spare was not there, because it was already assigned as the 4th drive in the raid configuration

So they sent it as a 4-disk RAID 5? You didn't say that, but that makes sense now as to why they had to do what they did. I would still recommend a 4-disk RAID 6 over a 3-disk RAID 5 with a hotspare, especially if your disks are 1TB or larger.

Sorry I wasn't clear.

found my own solution