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Can I rebuild raid array with Dell EMC OpenManage Server Administrator on non dell certified drives without shutting down the server?

Dana D
Dana D asked
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Last Modified: 2019-03-26
I have a dell PowerEdge R610 physical server (W/Perc H700 Raid Controller) that is setup as an esxi 6.0 host. The 3 internal disks are setup in raid 0 for some reason and i want to know if i could swap the prefailed drive with a new one (which i already know will kill the raid 0 array configuration) will i be able to rebuild the raid array to be raid 1 with Dell EMC OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA) without shutting down server? The hard drives are not dell certified disks.
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andyalderretired saggar maker
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Distinguished Expert 2019

Commented:
If it is booted from SD card then yes you can still run OMSA and reconfigure the array however you want. If it is booted from the array then it may crash although VMware is very tolerant of that as it runs the hypervisor from RAM.

If you are going from 3 disk RAID 0 to 2 disk RAID 1 you don't even need to physically remove the dodgy disk.
Philip ElderTechnical Architect - HA/Compute/Storage
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Commented:
You could add a new disk and migrate the current RAID 0 array to a RAID 5 array to give some protection for the data.

The catch with RAID 5 parity will be the on-board cache setup. So long as it's non-volatile enable the Write-Back setting to gain a substantial amount of I/O performance. Without it, things would crawl.

Oh, and make sure the backups are good and bare metal/hypervisor restore tested just-in-case. ;)
Tom CieslikIT Engineer
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Commented:
You can't rebuild Raid 0 to Raid 1.
If you still have access to Raid 0  volume,and you have free slots for hot swap disks, put few new and create new Raid 1, then copy over data from Raid 0 to Raid 1.

You don;t have to shut down server
Dana DIT Consultant
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Commented:
Well im assuming that once i pull the prefailing disk it will crash the raid 0 array (losing all date - which is fine as there is no production data on it and its also been backed up) - is this correct? If so then dont i need to destroy the raid 0 first before enter the new disk and then build the raid 1 with my 3 working disks?
andyalderretired saggar maker
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Commented:
You still need to delete that array to remove the metadata from the other disks and from the controller. Just because that array crashes does not mean it is deleted from the disks or the controller, in fact if you powered off and reinserted the disk you would see the data again when you powered on.

You cannot have RAID 1 with 3 disks, so either RAID 1 plus hot spare or RAID 5 as I don't think that controller supports RAID 1E.
Tom CieslikIT Engineer
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Commented:
Yes,, if you want just replace disk and create new raid,,, just simply delete raid using Dell Open Manage Server Administrator, then replace drives and create new Raid 1 + Spare or Raid 5,,,

Server restart is not required.
andyalderretired saggar maker
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Commented:
Only if the server is booted from something else such as SD card, if it was booted from this array then you will wipe out the hypervisor.
Dana DIT Consultant
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Commented:
I ended up just retiring this server because we had another monster server to handle the load. Thank You All for your help!
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Tom CieslikIT Engineer
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Commented:
Dana D, can you please explain your choice for solution ?

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