Dell PowerVault MD1120 - Manual (Page 23)

A REFERENCE GUIDE FOR OPTIMIZING DELL™ POWERVAULT™ MD1XXX FAMILY SAS SOLUTION VER A02
PAGE 23 6/16/2008
Table 4: Virtual disk reconfiguration on the PERC 5/E and PERC 6/E RAID controllers
PERC 5/E and PERC6/E
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 (on a single disk) RAID 5 Add at least two additional disks
*RAID 0 (on a single disk) RAID 6 Add at least three additional
disks
RAID 1 RAID 0 With or without adding additional
disks
RAID 1 RAID 5 Add at least one additional disk
*RAID 1 RAID 6 Add at least two additional disks
RAID 5 RAID 0 With or without adding additional
disks
*RAID 5 RAID 6 Add at least one additional disk
*RAID 6 RAID 0 With or without adding additional
disks
*RAID 6 RAID 5 With or without adding additional
disks
* denotes only applicable to the PERC 6/E controller
Other considerations may apply to virtual disk reconfiguration. For example, you cannot create
more than sixty four virtual disks on the PERC 5/E and PERC 6/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 and PERC 6/E
controllers recognize 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
or PERC 6/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 or PERC 6/E
controller.
The following conditions must be met to successfully migrate the physical disks and their resident
virtual disks: