RAID Installed

[repairer]

Hi,

We have a HP DL360 1u Rack Server with Windows 2003 installed, the server has two 73gb SCSI drives, how do I tell if these drives are configured for RAID? I can only see one drive, in control panel system it lists under device manager/SCSI RAID controllers "SMART ARRAY 5i"

Is my server setup for RAID? are both hard drives in use?

We are fairly new to this so any help would be much appreciated.


Thanks

Pete

 

[spi200]

Hi Repairer

You need to go into the HP raid configuration utility, there are two ways to get to this.
1. HP RAID Utility may be installed on the server under program files. This software is not always installed when the server was built.
2. Go into the ACU (Array Configuration utility) when the server boots, as the server boots hit F8 or F9 are directed.
Once your in either of these utils (both do the same thing) show the logical drives and then have a look at the physical drives. The logical rive will most likely be made up of two physical drive configured in a RAID1 raid set. Think of RAID1 as a hardware mirror. So two drives each of 73Gb give you a total logical drive space of 73Gb - If do not have then it will be a different RAID config, likely RAID0 (146Gb) or none at all.
I have a numebr of these servers and they have proved most reliable over the years. My servers which are configured the same as your as in a RAID1 configuration which is both redundant and fast.
Because the hardware looks after the RAID set the OS only see the Logical drive that is presented to it. Hence when you look at Control panel etc you only see one drive totaling 73 Gb or there abouts. You can of course still partition you 73Gb up to your desires. ie Boot partition, swap partion and data partition - this is just further logical segmentation but is good pratice for managabitlity.

Hope this helps.


Dave