This is a story about how we migrated a production server from RAID-1 to RAID-5 without losing data, using the PERC H730 controller.

Recently,  we pushed a Dell server’s PERC RAID controller to its limit.  (After making a verified good backup, of course). Originally, the server’s hard drives were set up as a RAID 1 with two disks. We added 3 more drives and wanted to switch the scheme to RAID 5 without losing data.

The steps:

Reboot, go into BIOS (F2) Device Settings Select the RAID Controller H730P Mini PERC Configuration Utility Virtual Disk Management, then in the Operation area “Reconfigure virtual disks” Raid level 5. At this point, we were prompted to select physical disks, so I selected the new ones.  A warning appeared that data would be erased on these disks (the new disks).  Okay. Continue through (Finish) and a statement appears that the reconfiguration has started and you can check the status to see when it finishes. When we refreshed the menu for Virtual Disk Management, we saw the reconfiguration slowly processing.  It took about 15 minutes for the first 1%.

25 hours to finish reconfiguration…

We don’t have time for this!  This server needs to be back online! So… we exited the BIOS, which restarted the server.  Then into Windows! We were pretty sure it would work, and it did.  The modern PERC controller can handle reboots while it is rebuilding… or re-configuring RAIDs.   In fact, we ended up rebooting the server a few more times to perform other maintenance actions (installing/configuring software) and it was just fine.    Hooray technology! The last step (after the RAID initialization finishes) will be to log into Windows and do a re-scan in disk management.

Helpful links:

Dell Manuals:

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/poweredge-rc-h730/manuals 

Server generation search:

http://pilot.search.dell.com/h730p

R730 PowerEdge server:

http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/shared-content~data-sheets~en/documents~dell-poweredge-r730-and-r730xd-technical-guide-v1-7.pdf

The PERC9 RAID Controller generation includes H330, H730, H730P, H830

Selfish plug time (sorry!)

Thanks for reading this article! I hope it helps you! If you have tips or feedback, please comment or send me an email so that others can benefit. I am a consultant in the Maryland/DC area in the USA. My specialties are Windows migrations (to 2016 and to Office 365 / Azure), VMware migrations, Netapp and SAN, and high availability / disaster recovery planning. If your business would like help with your complex project, or would like a architectural review to improve your availability, please reach out!    More information and contact can be found on the About page. – Amira Armond