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Re: Smart Array P410

 
MT1977
Occasional Visitor

Smart Array P410

Hi,

Hope I'm posting this in the right area!

I'm running an ML330 G6, Windows 2008 SP2

It has a Smart Array P410, No Battery/Cache.

4x 250GB drives in 2x RAID 1.

Latest Driver for this 2008 Server (NOT R2), latest firmware - 6.64.

If I replace each drive, one by one (allowing RAID to rebuild in between) with 500GB or 1TB disks, is there a way of expanding the Logical drive, even if it means booting to Smart Start? I know I need the Cache and battery if I'm to perform an online expand/extend, but can I do this, without the battery/cache, as an Offline task - I'm struggling to find information, despite an extensive search - everythings is telling me I need the battery/cache to do this online - That would be nice... but is it possible to do offline, without the battery/cache?

Alternatively, I'm needing to do this to increase the space available to an Exchange Database, would the Unused space appear (after swapping the drives and waiting for RAID rebuilds), which could be used to create a second Logical Drive (well, 3rd actually!), but second off that RAID 1 set, so I could simply create another 250GB drive in Windows, create a new Exchange Database, and migrate some mailboxes to it - easing the 1st DB's storage usage?

Any advice appreciated!

Thanks, Mark

3 REPLIES 3
Torsten.
Acclaimed Contributor

Re: Smart Array P410

There probably is no offline procedure, but you may consider to create a new RAID and clone your data using various available cloning tools.


Hope this helps!
Regards
Torsten.

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waaronb
Respected Contributor

Re: Smart Array P410

You could try booting from the old Smartstart CD and use the array management software from there. It might let you do a RAID expansion from there, even without the cache module, but honestly I've never tried it.

For an Exchange server you're probably better off just buying a cache module off eBay or something... I'm sure you can find those for the P410 without any problems. We sent our old servers, including DL3x0 G6 models, to be recycled and I'm pretty sure that's where a lot of those eBay items come from... the recyclers stripping it and selling the parts.

Once you do get the array expanded, from Windows you'll see the new, larger drive and you should be able to extend the existing partition if you want, or create a new partition in the empty space.  I'm pretty sure Windows 2008 let you extend partitions (it's been so long)

MT1977
Occasional Visitor

Re: Smart Array P410

Thanks for your comments guys.

In the end I bought the BWCC (512MB and the Battery), 2x 500GB Hard drives - arranged downtime to fit the BWCC, gave it a day to charge the battery, then swapped the drives one by one - RAID/Mirror rebuilt really quickly to be fair - must have been less then an hour for each disk.

Extended the Array (through ACU), which worked well...

Went into Windows to Extend the Disk - FAIL!

Disk Manager saw the extra space, but not Explorer.

After stressing for a bit, someone else had the same problem with a 2008 Server - needed to also use DiskPart to expand it. Did that, worked perfectly... Exchange is chugging alone nicely again, consume far more disk space that ideally it should, but currently there is plenty for it to eat away at...

 

Thanks again.

Mark