Adding Raid to an existing Win 2008 System

[Mike Fuesting]

I have an ML115 which has been up and running nicely and now the boss wants to add new function that will require a simple raid 1 mirroring arrangement of 2 TB drives. The machine has never had raid activated before. Do I have to activate with the raid driver floppy disk and reinstall the OS and completely rebuild the system to accomplish this at this point?

[Proliant Watch]

You need to boot the server to ORCA/BIOS of the controller by pressing f8 at post and configure array and raid.

Refer to the HP webpage below :

http://docs.hp.com/en/J6369-90075/ch03s03.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

for ML115 G5:
Storage Controller:
4 Port SATA controller with Embedded RAID on Motherboard (RAID 0, 1, 5)

Internal Drive Support:
4 HDD Support
Internal SAS storage capacity of up to 1.8TB (4 x 450GB 3.5" SAS drives)
Internal SATA storage capacity of up to 4.0TB (8 x 2TB 3.5" SATA drives)

Regards,
http://hpproliant.blogspot.com/

[Mike Fuesting]

OK, I've done this - although the Nvidia set-up is more basic it does allow me to create the desired array. The big short fall is that it gives me no visible way to monitor it from the desktop. ie the only way to tell if the array has a problem with it is to reboot the machine and watch for the half second screen that tells me nvidia raid is set up and ok or has failed. We don't reboot this machine very often and need a better way of monitoring the health of the array. The HP program doesn't recognize the bios raid array as being present. How can I best achieve this type of monitoring function like I had on my old server?

Thanks!

[Proliant Watch]

100 series have only limited monitoring softwares compared to other series. You can install ADU and monitor Array

[Mike Fuesting]

What is ADU and how do I install?

[WFHC-WI]

Hi Mike,

ADU is HP's Array Diagnostic Utility. It's included along with the Array Configuration Utility, a GUI for building and configuring arrays. ADU can help identify issues with an array but I'm not sure it's going to be the most useful for monitoring.

You may want to consider installing HP's System Management Homepage for the server. That would allow you to use a web browser to monitor the status of the server. Of course it is still a manual process to discover problems, but at least you don't have to boot the server to see an issue.

If you install and configure the HP Management Agents and SNMP, you can have another machine accept traps from the ML115 and take action such as sending an email. You could also consider monitoring the event logs for array configuration status changes.

good luck, if you appreciate the answers we appreciate the points!

[Mike Fuesting]

You were right, the ADU doesn't detect the controller. The link you sent me earlier talks about Nvidia media shield software. This is what was on my old server. Is there anyway possible to add media shield to the DL115?