Need Sever help!

[asuna Kaligawa]

I need some help, I currently run 3 drives in a 4 bay system which the 4th bay was used to run the OS drive, I have relocated that and would like to add a drive to the current raid 5 setup. Its a larger Hard drive, and I plan on migrating the smaller drives to the larger ones. is there a way I can do this so I can start swapping drives? or do I have to do some black magic forkery to get my data migrated over to another system, and just restart the raid building and set up for my Server OS?

 

Its a dell poweredge R410 with a PERC h700 Adapter.

[Electronics Wizardy]

You can expand. raid 5 with that raid card.

 

Id mke sure you hve. good bckup first.

 

 

[asuna Kaligawa]

16 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can expand. raid 5 with that raid card.

 

Id mke sure you hve. good bckup first.

 

 

is there anything specific i need to do other than the backup? which is a must in this day and age of tech, I'm not 100% sure on how i can add a drive to the current array with out clearing the config, and redoing the VD. I know in a worst case, I can pull the data off the current VD and just start the server process from scratch.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, asuna Kaligawa said:

is there anything specific i need to do other than the backup? which is a must in this day and age of tech, I'm not 100% sure on how i can add a drive to the current array with out clearing the config, and redoing the VD. I know in a worst case, I can pull the data off the current VD and just start the server process from scratch.

Did you look up raid expansion guides for the h700? You can just add a drive, and it will make the raid use all the drives and have more usable space.

 

 

[asuna Kaligawa]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Did you look up raid expansion guides for the h700? You can just add a drive, and it will make the raid use all the drives and have more usable space.

 

 

most of if not all of what I'm finding is through this thing called openmange, which every time i try to download from dell just displays all this jumbled text on my browser and isnt downloading

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, asuna Kaligawa said:

most of if not all of what I'm finding is through this thing called openmange, which every time i try to download from dell just displays all this jumbled text on my browser and isnt downloading

 

Do you ahve software to manage the raid card? There should be a app for most oses, or you can do it through the drac.

[asuna Kaligawa]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you ahve software to manage the raid card? There should be a app for most oses, or you can do it through the drac.

this Server did not come with an iDrac, Ive been doing everything from the Bios Config utility

[Dutch_Master]

Depending on how you have configured said card, you may be able to set up a RAID1 with the new large HDD and the RAID5.

Spoiler

RAID can be nested, this means an array can comprise of one or more arrays as members. Theoretically indefinitely, in praxis one level deep is the max you want, given the demising return on cost vs performance and capacity.

This allows your NAS to copy the contents of your RAID5 to the new drive and will take a while. Once done, remove the RAID5 from the RAID1 and replace those drives for larger ones. Repeat the process.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, asuna Kaligawa said:

this Server did not come with an iDrac, Ive been doing everything from the Bios Config utility

Then you should be ble to go in there, and  tell it to expnd the raid onto the new disk.

[asuna Kaligawa]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Then you should be ble to go in there, and  tell it to expnd the raid onto the new disk.

I'll give that a shot once this process finishes, I accidentally nudged bay 3 offline and its currently rebuilding that disk

[asuna Kaligawa]

3 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Then you should be ble to go in there, and  tell it to expnd the raid onto the new disk.

Option to expand is not select able

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, asuna Kaligawa said:

Option to expand is not select able

Is the new drive added and unconfigured good?

 

PIcs?

[asuna Kaligawa]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Is the new drive added and unconfigured good?

 

PIcs?

says its all good. i tried assigning it as a hot spare but it reports RED Unusable affinity?

[asuna Kaligawa]

4 hours ago, Dutch_Master said:

Depending on how you have configured said card, you may be able to set up a RAID1 with the new large HDD and the RAID5.

  Reveal hidden contents

RAID can be nested, this means an array can comprise of one or more arrays as members. Theoretically indefinitely, in praxis one level deep is the max you want, given the demising return on cost vs performance and capacity.

This allows your NAS to copy the contents of your RAID5 to the new drive and will take a while. Once done, remove the RAID5 from the RAID1 and replace those drives for larger ones. Repeat the process.

it all was set up as a raid 5.. is it possible to swap a 5 to a 1?

[Jarsky]

If you want to expand the RAID5 you shouldnt be trying to add configure it as a hot spare. 

Unconfigured Good is the appropriate condition so do not configure that disk. 

 

In the LSI WebBIOS utility (with retail LSI cards) you can go to the Virtual Drive properties and "Migrate with addition". You can then add the unconfigured disks from there, and do a migration/rebuild. I would assume there is something similar in the Dell configuration utility in that "Properties you have highlighted in the last screenshot. 

 

Alternatively if you already have an OS installed, consider installing Megaraid Storage Manager (MSM). Its a far more user friendly software to do all this with, and means you can actually have the server in the OS during the migration...i.e the server can be up. 

[Jarsky]

6 minutes ago, asuna Kaligawa said:

it all was set up as a raid 5.. is it possible to swap a 5 to a 1?

 

No that is not a supported migration path. RAID5 can only migrate to a RAID6 or higher. 

 

[asuna Kaligawa]

ok.. so i got MSM and open manage working...though i dont see an option to expand or migrate data?

https://gyazo.com/522133705eaaac52beffb8f134cea310

https://gyazo.com/d0ec5e78919961c621b807f3f458cab8

[Jarsky]

5 minutes ago, asuna Kaligawa said:

ok.. so i got MSM and open manage working...though i dont see an option to expand or migrate data?

https://gyazo.com/522133705eaaac52beffb8f134cea310

https://gyazo.com/d0ec5e78919961c621b807f3f458cab8

 

You arent configuring the drive, you're configuring the Virtual Drive. 

Look at the Drive Group, I think off memory right click it and there should be a Modify option or something similar. 

 

[asuna Kaligawa]

11 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

 

You arent configuring the drive, you're configuring the Virtual Drive. 

Look at the Drive Group, I think off memory right click it and there should be a Modify option or something similar. 

 

modify drive group?

https://gyazo.com/d6962889689aa497439a21a471846f52

that gives this

 

 

[Jarsky]

OK thats odd, adding a disk to an existing RAID5 is a valid configuration change, it should have RAID5 as an option in that dropdown. 

I've never tried mixing SAS with SATA drives though, I wonder if theres an incompatibility there....

[asuna Kaligawa]

10 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

OK thats odd, adding a disk to an existing RAID5 is a valid configuration change, it should have RAID5 as an option in that dropdown. 

I've never tried mixing SAS with SATA drives though, I wonder if theres an incompatibility there....

possible... i mean this thing aint exactly top of the line new hardware its olllddddddd so i guess its gonna have to be offload the data.... re virtual drive a new setup with the 4 sata drives, and reload the data? as you can tell.. im a server noob first ever server....

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, asuna Kaligawa said:

possible... i mean this thing aint exactly top of the line new hardware its olllddddddd so i guess its gonna have to be offload the data.... re virtual drive a new setup with the 4 sata drives, and reload the data? as you can tell.. im a server noob first ever server....

Mixing SAS and SATA is a no go in the PERCs Ive used. Thats probably your problem here.

 

Id get a sas drive to expand the array.

[Dutch_Master]

No reason for that, just attach the SATA drive to a SATA port on the mainboard. Provided it has one, of course. Then simply copy the data over.