PE 2600 SCSI Drives

Thu Nov 20 18:56:51 CST 2008

Hi Jeff,

Since you have a hot spare and one empty slot, you could buy 1 drive and take the hot spare for use as storage in a raid-1 mirror.   Alternatively, you could just take the hot spare and use it as a standalone drive and give out 36GB of disk space in just a few minutes.

OMSA has a good interface for building raid sets.   Login to omsa as root, then navigate to Storage, Perc, Virtual Disk, then click "Go to Create Virtual Disk Wizard".

To unassign the hot spare, the path is Storage, Perc, Connector, Enclosure, Physical Disk, then a pull down "unassign global hot spare".

After creating your new virtual disk (raid-1, or single disk), you will need to create a filesystem in Linux>
  partprobe (maybe reboot in RHEL3)
  cat /proc/partitions (find out the new device id, probably /dev/sdb)
  mke2fs -j -L /data /dev/sdb
  mkdir /data
  mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb /data
  (add something to /etc/fstab)

Be careful.

We have a PE-2650 with 5/36GB drives that is no longer being used.   If you are looking to buy a good old server, I can check with the boss and see if he wants to sell.

Paul

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Boyce" <jboyce at meridianenv.com>
To: linux-poweredge at dell.com, "Mike P Moore" <Mike.Moore at appliedbiosystems.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 4:37:46 PM (GMT-0600) America/Chicago
Subject: Re: PE 2600 SCSI Drives

Mike -

Thanks for the site reference, and the advice.  I am not sure that I can add 
a new drive to the RAID-5 without LVM.  Can someone explain to me if it is 
possible to add it to the RAID-5, even if it is retained as a seperate 
volume or partition (excuse my ignorance here)?  I don't have the time in 
the near future to reconfigure the storage to include LVM.  And if I did, I 
don't think the rest of the staff want the server down as long as it would 
probably take me to do it.  I would want to upgrade the OS while I am at it, 
but with only the single server I have to be assured that the few main 
software components would all be functional again (OMSA and Arkeia tape 
backup).  The reconfiguration may wait until the server is replaced.

Jeff

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Mike P Moore
To: Jeff Boyce
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 1:53 PM
Subject: Re: PE 2600 SCSI Drives

I have used:

http://discountechnology.com/

To purchase drives for my PE2650 (rack version of your 2600) in the past.
I don't know if you will be able to grow the RAID-5 array to the new drive 
in
the RAID controller.  You might have to back the data up, and rebuild the
array with the new configuration.  You might be able to use something
like the System Rescue CD (run qtParted on it) to resize the partitions.
QtParted is like Partition Magic, but I am not sure you can resize linux 
partitions.

  If you have to wipe the array, I'd recommend setting the new one
up with LVM.  Just to be future proof.

  Good luck!

Michael P. Moore
Senior Network Engineer
Applied Biosystems - High Throughput Discovery Division
P: 508-383-7486
ONNET: 685-7486

"Jeff Boyce" <jboyce at meridianenv.com>
Sent by: linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com
11/20/2008 04:33 PM To<linux-poweredge at dell.com>
cc
SubjectPE 2600 SCSI Drives

Greetings -

I am looking for an additional drive for a PE2600.  My search through the
Dell support site does not find a drive type and size that I currently have
in the system.  My objective is to add another drive to my Samba file server
to increase our storage space.  My server is currently configured with three
36GB drives in Raid 5 and one hot spare.  The Raid is not configured with
LVM.  I do have OMSA installed.  The PE2600 is our only server; and it is
running RH3.  The drives that are currently in it are 36.7GB, 15k RPM, Ultra
320, 80-pin, Dell Part # 341-1430.

Does anyone have a recommendation for another supplier that would have what
I am looking for?  I have always purchased my drives through Dell, so I am
not familiar with other reliable options/suppliers that might be available.
I am generally a novice (part-time) Linux administrator (full time forester)
for a small business, so if there are other options to achieve my objective,
I am open for suggestions.  Thanks.

Jeff Boyce
www.meridianenv.com

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