Adding New Drives to Dell R720 in RAID 1 Configuration w/ Dell Lifecycle Controller

Question

I have a Dell R720 with two 136GB drives set up on an existing virtual disc running RAID 1. I've run out of room, purchased two additional 600GB SAS 15K drives I'd like to set up for RAID 1 also to be available to the operating system. How do I go about adding RAIDing and adding these drives?

When I entered the lifecycle controller and tried to add there it had made it sound as if adding the two drives would wipe out any existing drives on the same RAID controller. Is this true?

Solution

For a production server I would NOT risk it. Because I've read the same lines and interpreted it as it would wipe whatever was there and write a completely new raid config, destroying any existing data.

• Install the Dell Openmanage Server Administrator (OMSA) into whatever OS you are running on that server you can add/edit/delete any arrays you like while the OS is running. Since it's an R720 I assume you have purchased the hot swap hdd capabilities, which would let you insert/remove drives with the system running, and with OMSA edit the raid config to be what you want.
• If you can't do that, then use the raid card's bios interface. I think it is ctrl+r during POST

Comments

[gh0st]

2.5K views and not a single up vote. I guess no one found it useful.

[gh0st]

It is a production server. I will try these options this evening and report back on my results.