Step-by-Step Guide to Configure Hardware

RAID on DELL servers with Screenshots

Expanding the capacity of a server by adding new
disk drives is a typical activity for administrator. In this article, let us review how to add two new
disk drives to the DELL server and create RAID 1 using Dell PowerEdge Expandable RAID
Controller PERC configuration utility. This tool is also called as PERC/CERC Bios
Configuration Utility.

If you are using the latest DELL Servers, please refer to the article that explains how to create
RAID on PERC 6/i Integrated BIOS Configuration Utility.

1. Launch PERC/CERC BIOS Configuration Utility.
Insert the two new disk drives onto the empty slots available on the server and reboot. During
the system startup, press Ctrl+M to launch the PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller BIOS
Configuration Utility.

2. Go to Configure -> View/Add Configuration
Using the arrow keys, select the Configure option from the main menu and View/Add
Configuration option from the Configure menu as shown below.

3. Status of the new disk drives
The View/Add Configuration menu item, will display all disk drives on the system along with
status. In the following example, 4 disk drives are online and already configured. The 2 new
drives display the READY status as shown below. The text next to ONLINE indicates the logical
volume number and the disk#inside the logical drive. For e.g. A01-00 indicates logical volume
1 and disk#0. A01-01 indicates logical volume 2 and disk#1.

4. Make the disk drives online
Use arrow key and select the first drive with READY status and press space bar, which
will change the status from READY to ONLINE and add A02-00 next to it. A02-00 will
be blinking at this stage.
The cursor will automatically move to the next available drive with READY status.
Press space bar, which will change the status from READY to ONLINE and add A02-01
next to it. Both A02-00 and A02-01 will be blinking at this stage.
Press Enter to indicate the array selection is complete. Both A02-00 and A02-01 will stop
blinking.

5. Configure the disk drives
Press F10 to continue the configuration of two selected disk drives. This will display the Array
configuration screen as shown below. The array number A02 number that got assigned for the
new disk drives from the previous step, is displayed here.

Press space bar which will display the Span-1 message in the A02 text area as shown
below.
Press F10 to continue the configuration to the next step.

6. Select RAID Level.
Pressing F10 from the above screen, will display the RAID configuration screen as shown below.
Use the arrow keys to select RAID 1 and press enter.
Use arrow keys to scroll down, select Accept and press enter to save the configurations.

The advanced menu in the above screen has the following options. I suggest that you dont
change this and leave it to the default values.
Stripe Size: 2KB, 4KB, 8KB, 16KB, 32KB, 64KB (default value) or 128 KB.
Write Policy: WRBACK (default value) or WRTHRU
Read Policy: NO_READAHEAD, READAHEAD or ADAPTIVE (default value)
Cache Policy: Cached IO or Direct IO (default value)
After saving the configuration, reboot the system. Logical Volume 02 is now configured as
RAID1 using the two new disk drives and ready for use.




Prepared By: Muhammad Umer (Systems Administrator)