Had a very simple question, which might sound quite naive for someone that has managed servers now for almost ten years!

I have a Dell Poweredge 2650 with a PERC3/DI RAID controller. The box currently runs Linux and has two (RAID1 config) 36gb U320 80pin 15k drives.

I plan to wipe the box clean and start over with Windows 2003 Server (it will be a dedicated SQL Server box), but I want more disk capacity.

I've found the drives I would like to use (Seagate 15k 146GB U320, etc.), and really want to know if it is as simple as pulling out the old drives (they are hot swappable), putting in the new drives, and installing Windows 2003 Server.

So, I guess what I want to know is will Windows 2003 Server recognize the controller and setup the RAID1 configuration automatically? There is a Dell Array Manager Utility on my other Dell box, will I need to install this to configure the RAID?

I know this sounds simplistic, but I am a software guy, not a hardware guy!

 

Don't know if this will help, but I do work on the 2950's and by that I mean I usually just ghost the system drive with another already set-up w/what I need...to get the OS to recognize that 6th drive I have to go into the Raid Config (Cntl-R) at boot-up...

-highlight the ‘Controller 0’ drive
-press ‘F2’ key
-select ‘Foreign Config’, ‘Import’, ‘Yes’

Then from there I can run the Ghost program..

There are a whole bunch of other steps to set up the Raid configs, those steps are in the same Raid Config menu..

R/
Craig

 

Check Dell's web site for the fw on the perc controller. You may have to do a manual config if the controller does not auto size the disks.

 

As sysman said I would manually configure the RAID during the post.

Windows should never manage the RAID itself, horrible performance.

Configure the RAID (1 btw is the worst for ROI on storage costs but only option for 2 drives)
Install windows normally (have the perc drivers on hand in case windows doesn't recognize the hard drives)

 

You might want to look into getting more drives for a RAID5 array as it is the safest and most versatile there is.

Read up on this, it's a good guide to defining what RAID arrays are and what different types there are.
http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html

 

I'd buy at least 2 more identical drives and use RAID 5.

 

RAID 5 gives you the best storage rates but it does hurt performance some.

If money is no issue and we know it isn't right Steve Go with Raid 1+0

 

Need to check and make sure the Perc3 can use that large of a drive. I have several 2650's and the largest I have in them is 36gb. I havent tried to go bigger. I would download the latest firmware for the Perc3 and the Win2k3 drivers. All my 2650's still have 2000 server. I agree with some of the others get 4 identical drives, do a raid 5 with a hot spare.

 

If you want a hotspare, use 5 drives. A 3 drive RAID 5 array performs poorly.

 

RAID 5 is good perf for read-only db's, but not for read-write so this might not be the answer.

 

I suggested it for fault tolerance and ease of rebuild reasons, not necessarily performance.