Reformatting Storage Server

[churnd]

I have a DL380 G4 Storage Server with 3 StorageWorks RAID arrays hooked up to two separate controllers: a SmartArray 6400 and a SmartArray 6i. Each array is hooked up to it's own dedicated port on the respective controller. The system OS is Windows Server 2003 SP2 R2.

When we bought the server, Windows was in a previous version that didn't allow GPT type partitions. So, I had to create several 2TB partitions so they could be formatted NTFS and Windows could see them properly. Now with the latest Windows updates, I have the capability of formatting a partition with GPT, and being able to create a larger partition than 2TB.

I'd like to completely reformat all 3 RAID Arrays on the server to be one large partition that would encompass all three arrays. Is this possible based on my setup?

[churnd]

Nobody has any info on this?

[Víctor Cespón · Accepted solution]

The 2 TB limitation is still on the hardware, Smart array 6400 and 6i do not support logical drives above 2 TB, so all you can do is create several 2 TB logical units, convert them to dynamic disks and concatenate them using Windows, so they appear as a single spanned volume to the OS.

And even if this was using the new Smart Array SAS controllers that support logical drives bigger than 2 TB, you cannot create a RAID spanning disks connected to different controllers.

[churnd]

If I spanned the disks, what kind of fault tolerance would that give? 4 of the arrays are ADG (RAID 6) and one is RAID 5.

[Víctor Cespón]

Concatenating several logical units is essentially a software RAID 0, the information on each LUN resides only on that LUN. If there are 2 drive failures on a RAID 5 or 3 on a RAID 6, you'll lose all the data.