How to Upgrade Raid1 (IBM x205/4Lx)?

[joe75]

Hi All

I've an IBM server x205 with ServeRaid4Lx. 2x 36Gb SCSI are configured in RAID1 which contains Windows200SBS + data partitions.

I would like to add additional capacity to the disk. Which option is best? I can think of the following but had never tried them other than backup/restore

(1) ServeRaid4Lx is single channel. Is it possible to configure an additional RAID1 73Gb?

(2) Use Ghost to load "old disk image" to one of the 73Gb disks. Create a new mirror with the 73Gb

(3) Backup everything, rebuild, restore from backup (No...)

Much appreciated
Joe

 

[paulw]

Joe
As long as you can physically mount the extra disk and have the right SCSI cable you can add capacity to your 4LX adaptor.

First thing to do is update the firmware and windows drivers to the lastes levels (you may as well do the system Bios at the same time)

Ghost is very hit and miss with Raid controllers, so it really depends on how your partitions are configured as to how you proceed.

As you currently are Raid 1 , add two disks and create another raid 1 array, or blow it away and rebuild as Raid5 or Raid10. Blowing a server away is always risky as you have to be able to restore from tape or an image.

We have used Paragon Harddisk manager on IBM servers with Raid cards succesfully.

http://www.paragon.ag/hdm/

One way to test is to install an IDE disk, dump the image to it and see it you can boot up the server, then you know you have a running system fall back if the raid reconfig goes badly