[GTALUG] Poweredger server question

o1bigtenor o1bigtenor at gmail.com
Tue Aug 18 15:39:54 UTC 2015


On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 9:00 AM, Lennart Sorensen <
lsorense at csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 06:50:00AM -0500, o1bigtenor wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 4:38 PM, Lennart Sorensen <
> > lsorense at csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> >
> > > On Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 10:33:49PM -0500, o1bigtenor wrote:
> > > > Greetings
> > > >
> > > > Managed to buy a Dell poweredge 2950II server.
> > > >
> > > > What an odyssey to set up the bios!!!
> > > >
> > > > I have 2 drives I got with the machine - - - they were part of a
> Raid 5
> > > > array.
> > > > Now there are only 2 drives (will never by a raid 5 array by
> definition)
> > > > and I need some way of formatting them so that I can turn them into a
> > > Raid
> > > > 1 array. (Its all hardware raid on this box.)
> > > >
> > > > Anyone with any idea on how to do that to scsi drives when the
> controller
> > > > won't let me change their settings and I have no other pox to put
> them
> > > in.
> > > > (Connector is a wee bit different than for SATA!)
>
> That would be SAS.  SAS controllers can run SATA disks, but no the other
> way around.
>
> > > Certainly some raid controllers have an initialize option you can apply
> > > to disks to clean them so they can be reused in a new raid.
> > >
> > > No idea which raid controller model you are dealing with.
> > >
> >
> > Its a Perc 5/i if that helps.
>
> Well here is a handy video:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5lGWdvJyS4
>
> It seems you hit control-r to enter the raid setup when prompted, then
> in there there is a PD management tab (PD = physical disk I suspect)
>
> Looks like control-n is how to change tabs.
>
> I found a page that says if you see 'foreign' config present, then you
> can hit F2 on the controller on the VD management page and ask it to
> clear that.
>
>
Thank you very much!!

This last bit of information was what enabled me to finish my system setup.

So - - - procedure followed:

1. Ctrl R to get into the RAID utility
2. Use Ctrl-N to get to the Virtual Disk page
3. Move cursor to the line (controller) that has the word 'foreign' in it.
4. F2 will then take to where it asks if you want to initiailize and
something else that I have now forgotten.

With the initialization one can now set up a new array (in my case a RAID 1
(for data security)).

So thank you all for your various tips and assistance - - - I now have a
server with 6 disks running OpenMediaVault.

(Now if there just were someway to get this ancient BIOS to recognize discs
of great than 2 TB in size and if there were a way to update the BIOS
without needing to run MS windows things would be real real good!)

Dee
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