DEll PE/2950 III Perc 6/i RAID 1

[DozAdmin]

I am new to Dell setup, not sure if I'm missing something. I have 5 drives, want 1 for OS the other 4 on a RAID 10 array. I would like to have 4 logical drives on the array.

Dell calls an Array a virtual drive ( I guess ). I don't see how to create more than one logical drive in the RAID 10 array?

If this isn't supported I have other ?S

Thanks in advance.

 

[technome]

I would rethink 1 disk for the OS!!!!
A 2 disk raid 1 for the OS is critical

If you still want your setup...
For the OS, a one disk setup is created by defining the virtual drive (yes it means array) as a raid 0.

As to the logical drives on the raid 10 array, this has nothing to do with the raid 10 setup. Raid adapters have nothing to do with (or are aware of) logical drives
The logical drives are created within Windows, within "Disk Manager".

refer to the manual...

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/storage/RAID/PERC6ir/en/index.htm

........................................
Chernobyl disaster..a must see pictorial

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm

 

[DozAdmin]

Guess it's just a different setup. With the HP / Compaq setup you can create the logical drives in the hp / compaq array configuration. With the dell you can do that with RAID setup other than 10 - when RAID 10 is selected the drive space is locked.

 

[technome]

Technically, you can create multiple volumes on a Perc(Lsilogic base) adapter, you just choose a smaller amount of megabytes when you create your first volume, the remainder of space can be used for more array volumes. With one large volume, it is easier and faster to create partitions from within Windows.

Which now that I think about it, dividing the volume space at the raid adapter level, would make for a more stabil disk structure... Microsoft would be out of the picture, at least for the major divisions of an array. Never gave this a thought until you brought it up, as I rarely use more than one partition for an array set. Then again, I have had very few problems with partition information corrupting.


........................................
Chernobyl disaster..a must see pictorial

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm

 

[technome]

Kfoutts from the Dell site....

Misunderstood until now....
"when RAID 10 is selected the drive space is locked."

Hard to believe they would lock you out of making multiple volumes. Don't remember the older raid interfaces locking much of anything, Lsilogic or Dell must have had mucho tech incidents of users screwing up the configuration.

I only used the newest raid bios setup a couple of times. It sucks, they removed so many features from it, you need to use Dell server manager to change them or use the CLI.
With the command line you can do ANYTHING, but it is a royal pain as documentation is really sparse.



........................................
Chernobyl disaster..a must see pictorial

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm

 

[DozAdmin]

I appreciate the reply! It's strange, only the RAID 10 selection locks the drive size field in the Ctrl+R setup. Any other selection and you can configure different logical drives by just selecting less that the total disk space - when RAID 10 is selected you automatically get all the disk space selected and can't change it. Obviously logical drives can still be created in Windows disk manager.

And as I said -what brought me asking questions is that it's just different from a Compaq setup where you create the array, then create drives. - It's Logical

But all this hasn't been a waste, I've been encouraged enough times to go with RAID 1 on the OS that I've decided to do this now - I was going to hold off and save 200$. I've never had a compaq drive fail on me, but obvioulsy they do or RAID wouldn't exist.

I appreciate the help - and this forum!!

 

[technome]

This raid adapter's raid 1 performance is really good, the raid 10 should be great.
As to cache, do not even consider "write through" caching (performance is hideous, as it should be), "write back" has a remarkable affect on the throughput with this raid adapter. Lsilogic, the OEM Perc supplier has worked on the cache for R1 and R10, years ago they totally ignored it.

Just benchmarked the arrays on a Perc 6/i Sunday, against a u320 SCSI Pci-express raid Perc, (couple generations back) easily >4x faster in both reads and writes, copying etc.


........................................
Chernobyl disaster..a must see pictorial

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm