RAID Migration

[CEP-Mike]

Hi all,

Soon I'll be undergoing a project to migrate from a HP B140i software RAID to a HP P440/4GB hardware RAID on a DL60 & DL80 Gen9 server.

Question is (according to the specs), is that it's possible to migrate the existing RAID without destroying or re-building it, but I'm not entirely clear how.

By shutting down the server, installing the P440/4GB RAID card, powering back up and installing drivers I'm clear on; but it's the swapping of the cables I'm unsure about after a second shutdown.

Once swapping/replacing the cables from the onboard SATA controller with the relevant SAS/SATA cable and plugging into the P440/4GB, will the Intelligent Provisioning BIOS do all the work? I can't seem to find any specific instructions online what the correct procedure is. Thanks!

[BOYAN BIANDOV]

I don't believe there's an eas way to do that; moving from soft to hard RAID... The closest easy solution that comes to mind is to p2v the server while it's still running under soft RAID and then do the bare metal changes -- when all is said and done with the disk moves install a hypervisor and run your p2v files as a guest OS under the new host. 

~B

[Jimmy Vance]

The software RAID stack this is used in the driver for the B140 is compatible with the 'P' series Smart Array controllers.  If you have the driver for the 'P" series in the OS, you should be able to move the drives to the 'P' series controller.

Anytime you are working with drives and data make sure you have a valid backup before making changes