Add Disks to Logical Drive on PERC5/2950? Update 2

[nicole]

Two things. First, a reply to John, then a reply to Patrick.

(I did submit this reply to John directly from my gmail account, but it
bounced as my gmail account isn't a direct subscriber)

On 9/23/07, John <jses27 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Why would the only way to configure a perc5 be through omsa? Have a
> look
> see at the perc5 Bios on boot and you should be able to configure the
> RAID 5 array from there and add disks to the array, format etc. Also
> for
> Large drives you will mostly configure through GPT .Searh gpt on prior
> posts at google. (gpt site:linux-poweredge at dell.com) Also since you
> mention using Debian OS some dell servers that use SAS drives have
> problems with being recognized by Debian.

Hi John,

Unfortunately, there is no way in the perc5 BIOS to add drives to an
array. If you have specifics, I'd be glad to hear them, but I have yet
to actually see this ability surfaced in an way.

I am already aware of the GPT problem, as I've set up a second similar
2950 from scratch as well, with debian, GPT, and using the full 2+TB.
The problem is... cloning it. ;o) Which leads me to building a smaller
system, cloning, and growing. There are definitely caveats to
installing debian - it will use GPT by default if you partition over
2TB, otherwise it will use MSDOS (if you want to use GPT, you'd have
to run 'mklabel gpt' before partitioning in parted); and, grub doesn't
work because debian is using an un-gpt-patched version (grub2 does
work from testing, I verified that, too) so you'll have to use lilo
and move to grub2 later.

So far, for me, megaraid_sas has worked great, at least in the etch
installer. I have always built my own kernels otherwise (for both
standalone SAS, standalone SATA, and either in RAID). I'm sure it
didn't work in the sarge installer, since megaraid_sas didn't exist
then. ;o)

On 9/24/07, Patrick_Boyd at dell.com <Patrick_Boyd at dell.com> wrote:
> The reconfiguration (RAID level migration and capacity expansion) were
> removed from Ctrl-R because almost no customers were able to use this
> feature correctly and many times lost data because of the
> misunderstanding. If you want to reconfigure you should use OMSA or
> the
> Dell DTK as these are the only tools supported by Dell for this
> purpose.

Hi Patrick,

I understand this reasoning. I tried to do this in the OMSA following
the user manual instructions:

<snip>
To start the Reconstruction Wizard, select a virtual disk icon in 
the left panel of the Dell SAS RAID Storage Manager window and then 
select Operations->Advanced Operations-> Reconstruction Wizard from the 
menu. This section has the following subsections explaining the 
Reconstruction Wizard options:
</snip>

The only options I have most of the time are:
Delete Virtual Disk
Locate Virtual Disk
Stop Locating Virtual Disk
Check Consistency

I only see the "Reconstruction Wizard" after I create a fresh array with
OMSA. I've actually gone in and created an array, then clicked around,
and come back to find that I can't select the "Reconstruction Wizard"
anymore. Sometimes when I open it, it doesn't appear at all. It's hard
to make a reliable process out of something unreliable. ;o)

I'll keep messing around. I haven't tried the DTK as of yet. 

Thanks for the advice,
-nicole