Need help with rebuilding/upgrading a 4400 Server

[fzraura]

I'm relatively new to servers and am now assigned the project of upgrading a 4400 Server for work. I was wondering if anyone could give me a step-by-step list of the order of which I should do things.

The customer ordered upgrade components from DELL and here is what they ordered:

- currently have 3 drives and are adding 4 73GB drives
- upgrade to Win Server 2000
- purchased a Drive Cage
- purchased additional memory (no specs on this)
- Raid 5 system
- Perc 3/Di controller

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[NickFerrar]

When you mention RAID5 system and the PERC controller do you mean they ordered these or they are in the system already?

Personally, if everything you list is new, I'd rebuild the server from scratch rather than upgrade it.

If you really have to upgrade it I'd do the Win2000 upgrade first, followed by the memory and then the disks (a couple of days later once the system has been running OK). If you already have the 3 disks raided then it would be easiest to create another RAID set with the 4 new disks.

If you were to rebuild from scratch, then depending on the data requirements you have I'd be tempted to RAID1 2 of the original 3 disks and have those for the system/boot volume and then create a RAID5 set with the 4 new disks for the data (with the 3rd original disk as a spare in case a mirror drive fails).