Mirroring RAID-1

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob Walker
  • Start date Start date
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Bob Walker

My customer has a Dell PoweEdge 1400sc with a PERC RAID controller and two
drives, mirrored. They would like to make an image or copy of the server to
store offline. I was wondering if I could attach an IDE drive to one of the
unused IDE channels and mirror the volume that the mirrored drives make up.

Presently, the RAID drives appear as volume C: and I though I could use Disk
Manager to mirror that. Comments?
 
I dont have one to test but IIRC you can swap out one of the drives with
a blank and have the RAID controller take care of the duping, and take
the one you pulled offsite. Read up on the controller before you do this
,but thats the whole premise behind RAID 1 setups. I would suggest
buying a couple spare drives with the same characteristics as the ones
you already have.
 
You could break the mirror and do this, but then my customer would have to
buy a SCSI drive instead of a less expensive IDE drive.
 
You can do all this with Software Mirroring ON Server and
IDE or any hardware RAID controller that supports IDE
and works with your OS and the drive you choose.
 
My point was that if this is a Server (OS) then he
can use Software Raid to make the copy -- it's
going to hurt his performance since the drives
and controller types don't match but it will run
for an hour or so to make the copy.
 
Herb, here I see, now! Blinded by the trees :-)

Here was the outcome this morning. In Disk Manager, Disk Manager was
replaced by Dell's OpenManage MMC. Disk 0 showed up as the IDE drive I put
on IDE 2. Disk 1 showed up as a a virtual disk with three partition, Dell's
recovery and a C: and D:

Virtual disk 1 was a standard disk and I was reluctant to change it to a
dynamic disk because I was not sure if this would alter the PERC
configuration.

Disk 0 was changed to a dynamic disk, but both disks have to be dynamic in
order to create a mirror volume. Would I have been safely able to convert a
virtual basic disk to a dynamic disk?
 
Here was the outcome this morning. In Disk Manager, Disk Manager was
replaced by Dell's OpenManage MMC. Disk 0 showed up as the IDE drive I put
on IDE 2. Disk 1 showed up as a a virtual disk with three partition, Dell's
recovery and a C: and D:

Virtual disk 1 was a standard disk and I was reluctant to change it to a
dynamic disk because I was not sure if this would alter the PERC
configuration.

Disk 0 was changed to a dynamic disk, but both disks have to be dynamic in
order to create a mirror volume. Would I have been safely able to convert a
virtual basic disk to a dynamic disk?
Click to expand...

Darn pesky Dynamice disks -- there are really quite cool,
but when dealing with something unknown (to me) like a
special controller or OpenManage I cannot give a definitive
answer.

Odds are, yes, but note that MS Cluster services on Win2000
didn't support Dynamic disks.

Converting is quite safe, but I cannot tell you how third party
software or specialized hardware might react to it.
 
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