Adding drives to HP Server

[Kurtismonger]

We have a HP ML350 G4 (actually 2) with a Smart Array 641 controller and drive bay which currently has 2 72GB drives configured as 1 logical drive under the HP Array Config Utility. There are 4 slots still open in the drive bay and I need to add more storage for our group shared drive that currently resides on another server. I'm not real familiar with RAID or SCSI drives but I assume if I just stuff more drives in the server, it's going to add them to the current array. Can I add 2-3 150GB drives and configure them as a separate RAID array/logical drive? Server is running Windows 2003.

[Kurtismonger]

Hello?

[DimaYasny]

I presume you have a raid-1 in there with the original two drives?

[Kurtismonger]

Correct, forming 1 logical 70GB drive. Ideally what I would like is to add another logical drive using 2 of 3 new drives with RAID 1 and then have the third drive act as an online spare for either logical drive. The HP ACU, just doesn't give much info on how to add drives, other than to an existing RAID array.

[DimaYasny]

ok, what you do is
1. insert the new drives (should be hot-add iirc)
2. go into the raid controller utility and create a new raid array over those new drives. you can insert 3 drives, use 2 as raid1, and the third as hotspare for instance, or you can create a raid5 out of all three
3. go into the disk management of windows, initialize the new volume and create partitions; don't forget to format the partitions so they're usable

a BIG note: if you're not familiar with these actions, you're much better off calling HP server support, and having them guide you through the process. They have the equipment in front of them - I don't

[Kurtismonger]

Thanks, that's what I figured, but it's good to confirm. I assume I can use any Ultra320 drives? I have a decommissioned Dell server w/ 6 ultra320 36GB in it. I can pick up some HP hot swap drive caddy's cheap on eBay.

[DimaYasny]

I'm no expert on HP controllers, best guess would be to get the exactly same type of drives you already have

as for the Dell 36Gb disks... that's not much space at all, and those drives are OLD. Probably about to start dying anyway. Especially if they are maxtors

[gbarnas]

Correct, forming 1 logical 70GB drive. Ideally what I would like is to add another logical drive using 2 of 3 new drives with RAID 1 and then have the third drive act as an online spare for either logical drive. The HP ACU, just doesn't give much info on how to add drives, other than to an existing RAID array.

The ACU won't show much until there are new drives installed.

You can put 2 drives for RAID 1 or 3+ drives for RAID 5. You can use any size drives up to 340G (don't recall if larger are availble in 3.5", but 147G are now fairly inexpensive, and may be the largest if you're using 2.5" drives.) You can hot-add the drives. Once installed, the ACU should show unassigned drives. You can select those to create a new array. The versions of ACU I'm familiar with won't allow migration from RAID 1 to RAID 5, but will allow you to extend RAID 5 arrays by adding drives, so investigate and plan accordingly.

Simply select the unassigned drives and create a new array. Once the array is created and the config saved, open Disk Administrator, right click and choose Rescan.. you should see the new unallocated volume. From there, Initialize, convert to Dynamic (optional, but recommended), and create / format a partition.

Glenn