Expanding storage in Dell PowerEdge 2950

[+Chsoriano Subscriber²]

I have an existing RAID 5 configuration in a PoweEdge 2950 system. Is it possible to add a 1TB hard drive to the system and not include it in the RAID array? I would like to use the 1TB drive as a temporary storage location for non-critical data.

The system has 6 3.5" SCSI hot-plug hard drive bays (5 are in use) and I just want to slip in a 1TB drive. Will I run into any issues?

EDIT: This might be a dumb question... but is there any way to upgrade the storage of a RAID array by using larger hard drives? The 5 drives are currently 10K 300GB drives. If I wanted to upgrade to 750GB drives, can that be done in-place, like one drive at a time or something?

[+LogicalApex MVC]

Depends on the RAID controller, but they usually do support JBOD (individual disks). You will most likely have to declare the drive as such in the RAID utility.

For the second question, yes. Just as you stated. You will have to add the larger drives one at a time, allowing the array to be repaired each time. After you have successfully transitioned to the new drives you will need to use the Online Capacity Expansion feature of your RAID card to expand to the new capacity.

[sc302 Veteran]

i believe you can with server administrator installed. otherwise you will have to shutdown and enable it in the raid during boot up...

[+Chsoriano Subscriber²]

Depends on the RAID controller, but they usually do support JBOD (individual disks). You will most likely have to declare the drive as such in the RAID utility.

For the second question, yes. Just as you stated. You will have to add the larger drives one at a time, allowing the array to be repaired each time. After you have successfully transitioned to the new drives you will need to use the Online Capacity Expansion feature of your RAID card to expand to the new capacity.

The RAID controller is a PERC5i controller I believe. If I have to declare it as an individual disk that's fine.

Cool, that's good to know just in case we need to upgrade capacity. Thanks.

i believe you can with server administrator installed. otherwise you will have to shutdown and enable it in the raid during boot up...

Is that the Dell OpenManage software?

[sc302 Veteran]

yes, it makes a desktop short cut called "server administrator"

[nitrus]

yes, you can add a single drive to a server and populate it in the array as a single disk. just create an array like you would normally and select only the single drive you added and you should be able to initialize another logical drive.

as for the existing array expansion...yes, you can do it. however, i would not recommend it. resizing arrays on the fly is EXTREMELY time consuming and if it breaks at any point during the transition...you're basically screwed. i would just rebuild a new array with 5 new drives and migrate your old data somehow through some other method...external drive backup critical data or whatever....if that's not possible then you're going to have to go through the long process of expanding the array as a previous poster stated(1 drive at a time and allowing a repair each time).