Dell PowerVault MD1000 SAS Solution - Moving Physical Disks and Virtual Disk Configurations - Disk Roaming and Disk Migration

A REFERENCE GUIDE FOR OPTIMIZING DELL™ MD1000 SAS SOLUTIONS VER A00
PAGE 21 5/06/2005
Table 3: Virtual disk reconfiguration on the PERC 5/E RAID controller
PERC 5/Controller
Starting RAID Level
Target RAID Level Disk Requirements
RAID 0 RAID 0 Add at least one additional disk
RAID 0 (on a single disk)
RAID 1 Add a single disk
RAID 0 RAID 5 Add at least one additional disk
RAID 1 RAID 0
With or without adding additional
disks
RAID 1 RAID 5 Add additional disks
RAID 5 RAID 0
With or without adding additional
disks
RAID 5 RAID 5 Add additional disks
Other considerations may apply to virtual disk reconfiguration. For example, you cannot create
more than sixty four virtual disks on the PERC 5/E controller. After reaching this limit, you will not
be able to reconfigure any of the virtual disks on the controller.
The Reconfigure Virtual Disk wizard displays the available target RAID levels and the physical
disks. After you have selected the new RAID level and the physical disks, the Reconfigure Virtual
Disk wizard displays the previous and the new configuration so that you can confirm or reject the
changes.
Moving Physical Disks and Virtual Disk Configurations – Disk Roaming and Disk
Migration
Disk roaming refers to physically moving a disk from one cable connection to another or from one
backplane or enclosure slot to another on the same controller. The PERC 5/E controller recognizes
the relocated physical disks and logically restores the physical disk and its data to the proper virtual
disk. Disk roaming can be performed only when the system is shut down.
Disk migration refers to moving physical disks from one controller to another. Virtual disks residing
on the relocated physical disks are identified as a foreign configuration on the receiving PERC 5/E
controller. The Server Administrator enables you to import the foreign configuration so that the
migrated virtual disks can be managed on the receiving PERC 5/E controller.
The following conditions must be met to successfully migrate the physical disks and their resident
virtual disks:
• Virtual disks on a SAS controller can only be migrated to another SAS controller.
• When moving an enclosure, power down the enclosure and the server before moving the
enclosure. The enclosure can be moved to any connector number on the receiving
controller.