Dell EMC H745P MX - Reconfiguration of Virtual Disks

During full initialization, the host cannot access the virtual disk. You can start a full initialization on a virtual disk by using the Slow Initialize
option in the Dell OpenManage storage management application. For more information on using the HII Conguration Utility to perform a
full initialization, see Conguring virtual disk parameters.
NOTE: If the system reboots during a full initialization, the operation aborts and a BGI begins on the virtual disk.
Fast initialization
A fast initialization on a virtual disk overwrites the rst and last 8 MB of the virtual disk, clearing any boot records or partition information.
The operation takes only 2–3 seconds to complete, but it is followed by BGI, which takes a longer time to complete. To perform a fast
initialization using the HII Conguration Utility, see Conguring virtual disk parameters.
Reconguration of virtual disks
An online virtual disk can be recongured in ways that expands its capacity and/or change its RAID level.
NOTE: Spanned virtual disks such as RAID 50 and 60 cannot be recongured.
NOTE: Reconguring Virtual Disks typically impacts disk performance until the reconguration operation is complete.
Online Capacity Expansion (OCE) can be done in two ways:
1 If there is a single virtual disk in a disk group and free space is available, the virtual disk’s capacity can be expanded within that free
space. If multiple virtual disks exist within a common disk group, those virtual disk’s capacities cannot be expanded.
2 Free space is also available when a disk group’s physical disks are replaced by larger disks using the Replace Member feature. A virtual
disk's capacity can also be expanded by performing an OCE operation to add more physical disks.
RAID Level Migration (RLM) refers to changing a virtual disk’s RAID level. Both RLM and OCE can be done at the same time so that a
virtual disk can simultaneously have its RAID level changed and its capacity increased. When a RLM/OCE operation is complete, a reboot is
not required. The source RAID level column indicates the virtual disk RAID level before the RLM/OCE operation and the target RAID level
column indicates the RAID level after the RLM/OCE operation.
NOTE
: If the controller already contains the maximum number of virtual disks, you cannot perform a RAID level migration or
capacity expansion on any virtual disk.
NOTE: The controller changes the write cache policy of all virtual disks undergoing a RLM/OCE operation to Write-Through until
the RLM/OCE operation is complete.
See the following table for a list of RLM/OCE possibilities.
Table 6. RAID level migration
Source RAID Level Target RAID Level Number of Physical
Disks (Beginning)
Number of Physical
Disks (End)
Capacity Expansion
Possible
Description
RAID 0 RAID 0 1 2 or more Yes Increases capacity by
adding disks.
RAID 0 RAID 1 1 2 No Converts a non-
redundant virtual disk
into a mirrored virtual
disk by adding one
disk.
RAID 0 RAID 5 1 or more 3 or more Yes At least two disk
needs to be added
22 Features