How to extend a Virtual Disk allowing you to expand the RAID size.

How to change the RAID level of a Virtual Disk on a Dell PowerEdge Server

An online virtual disk can be reconfigured in ways that expand its capacity and or changes its RAID level.

Note: The controller changes the write cache policy of all virtual disks undergoing an RLM/OCE to Write-Through until the RLM/OCE is complete.Note: Spanned virtual disks such as RAID 50, and 60 cannot be reconfigured.Reconfiguring virtual disks typically impacts disk performance until the reconfiguration operation is complete.We recommend performing a backup before any RAID Reconfiguration.

Online Capacity Expansion (OCE) can be done in two ways:

• If there is a single virtual disk in a disk group and free space is available. The virtual disk’s capacity can be expanded within that free space.
• If a virtual disk is created and it does not use the maximum size of the disk group, free space is available.

Free space can also be available when a disk group’s physical disks are replaced with larger disks using the Replace Member feature. A virtual disk’s capacity can also be expanded by performing an OCE operation to add more physical disks.

RAID Level Migration (RLM) refers to changing a virtual disk’s RAID level. Both RLM and OCE can be done simultaneously so that a virtual disk can simultaneously have its RAID level that is changed and its capacity increased. When an RLM/OCE operation is complete, a reboot is not required. The source RAID level column indicates the virtual disk RAID level before the RLM/OCE operation. The target RAID level column indicates the RAID level after the RLM/OCE operation.
Note: This feature is available since iDRAC9 generation if you have a supported PERC(9 and 10).
To extend a virtual disk, add similar disk in the backplane and then reconfigure the virtual disk.

Reconfiguration can be done by following these steps:

• In the PERC BIOS menu (at startup), once the Virtual Disk is selected press F2, then Reconfigure.
• In OMSA (Openmanage Server Administrator), System > Storage > PERC > Virtual Disk > select Reconfigure in the dropdown menu.

Possible RAID Level Migrations:

Note: If the controller already contains the maximum number of virtual disks, you cannot perform a RAID level migration or capacity expansion on any virtual disk.