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How do you reconfigure RAID?

chcwm7777
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How would I go about changing the way RAID is setup on the NetApp/StorageVault S550 after the initial install has been run once?

If I run the setup utility again it states that no drives are availible.

Thanks in advance

1 REPLY 1

desi
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The StoreVault supports a single RAID group running either RAID DP (double parity) or RAID 4 (single parity). I believe the default factory configuration is RAID DP plus a single data drive. All additional drives are configured as spares.

During the initial setup wizrd, it will prompt you as to what RAID configuration you want to use. You can choose custom or automatic options. For automatic, there are two choices:

1. High Data Protection - RAID DP(two parity drives), data drives and single spare 2. Greater Storage -RAID 4 (one parity drive), data drives and single spare

There is also a custom option where you choose what to do.

So depending on which config you choose, you have the following options to change the configuration. However I cannot cover all possible options here. It may be best to tell me what you actually have and what you want to change. If you look at your system in the StoreVault GUI, how many total drives, how many parity (P) drives and spare (s) drives are listed ?

1. If you chose RAID DP with single hot spare.

a. you can chage the single spare to a data drive and run without a spare. You still have double disk failure protection.

b. You can change from RAID DP to RAID 4 using the StoreVault Manager GUI (right-click in the Storage Overview field and choose upgrade/downgrade RAID type).This will convert one of the partity drives to a spare drive and you can subsequently convert this spare to a data drive. You tthen have RAID 4 with single spare.

2. If you chose RAID 4 with single spare.

a. you can convert to RAID DP using the GUI. This will convert the single spare to a parity drive. You will now have RAID DP with no spare.

Note - be careful about changing RAID type. If you reconfigure a spare into a data drive, it cannot be reverted.

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