Raid Question (Netraid Card)

[Jonathan Alstead]

Hello,

If I currently have one hard drive running on my netserver lp1000r and add two further identical drives to it to build a raid 5 array, will I have to reinstall the operating system on the orginal drive to build the array?

Season greetings and have a good hogmanay.

Jon

[Terri Harris]

I assume the one drive is configured into a RAID 0 (and that you do have a NetRAID card installed). If that is correct, you can migrate the RAID 0 to a RAID 5. Easiest way to do this is with NetRAID Assistant, are you running Windows? If so, first install NetRAID Assistant under Windows, download it from here:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?locale=en_US〈=English&pnameOID=28162&prodSeriesId=28161&prodTypeId=15351&basePartNum=ns1962_1&locBasepartNum=ns1962_1en&os=Microsoft+Windows+2000&tech=Utility++Storage+Controller

I have attached the basic steps for adding online capacity to a NetRAID array (not for a NetRAID-4M). Just let me know if you have any further questions.

[Jonathan Alstead]

The system is running redhat 8.0 so is the precudure carried out pre the os loading?

Jon

[Terri Harris]

If you have the HP Navigator CD you can boot from this CD and run NetRAID Assistant - all the other steps apply the same.
The Ctrl-M (Express Tools) option during POST does not have the add online capacity feature.

[I.Delic]

Jon,

Yes if you want to use RAID5 with the existing disk ( disk with your OS Red Hat), but if you buy an another disk en one more RAID controller card you can build RAID 5 without reinstalling your OS.

Just leav your OS on an apart Disk.
Maybe in future you can buy another disk en then you can make Raid 1.
Did you use volumediskmanager to intall to creat your filesystems ?
If you did then yuo kan use LVM to mirror your os to another disk !

I hope this help but if you do this be sure you have a good backup.

Success

Idriz

[Jonathan Alstead]

Thanks for the repsonses they have been helpful.

One more question regarding raid. If I were to upgrade my current raid card (I have only one pci slot) to a Netraid 1M, would I have to reinstall the OS back onto the disk or could this be side stepped by installing the card prior to the OS been loaded?

Jon

[Mark Young_2]

Hi Jon,

If you are upgrading from a NetRAID 1Si or 3Si (only the 1Si is compatible with your server) then you can migrate to the NetRAID 1M or 2M without reinstalling your OS. Just be sure you have a good backup, as you should every time you fiddle with your array.

If you have one of the older cards, you are stuck with having to reinstall your OS once the new card is in place.

Mark

[Greg Carlson]

Jon,

I'm assuming that you have been running on the embedded Symbios controller as JBOD and want to migrate to a raid 5 array. I have done this successfully on a Windows box and it should work in Linux also. It is not supported by HP so just a heads up on that. What you need to do before adding the netraid controller is to install the netraid driver. Once you have the driver installed, then cable up to the netraid and create a RAID 0 with the single hdd which has your OS. DO NOT INITIALIZE when you create your RAID 0. If you added your driver you should be able to boot to the NOS. If you don't, you may want to post a follow up question for the linux gurus for linux assistance. If you are able to boot to the OS, then down the server and boot to the navigator CD to add capacity and migrate from the RAID 0 to a RAID 5. (You may need to boot to F2 setup and move the netraid card as the first bootable device after adding the card.)

HTH,
Greg