Dell PowerEdge and SAN

Dsrt

Baseband Member
Messages
51
Setup:

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2650 with 6 SCSI hard drives configured in a raid 5 array. I have a C: that contains the OS and a logical D: that contains data files. Disk 0 is set to dynamic (even though it says you can't have logical drives on dynamic disks).

We recently purchased a NetApp SAN. What I have done is created a LUN on the SAN connecting to our Dell server. That in turn created a Disk 1 on the server which I set to dynamic. I then mirrored the Disk 0 C: and then mirrored the Disk 0 D:. So now it shows the following config:

Disk 0
Dynamic
33.90
Online
39 MB healthy | (C: ) 12.00 GB NTFS Healthy (System) | (D: ) 21.86 GB NTFS Healthy

Disk 1
Dynamic
34.00 GB
Online
(C: ) 12.00 GB NTFS Healthy (System) | (D: ) 21.86 GB NTFS Healthy | 148 MB Unallocated

Questions:

Will this setup work if the server drives actually fail?

Is there a way to tell the server to boot off the Disk 1 array to ensure that this functions correctly?

Why do they say that you can't have logical drives when using Dynamic disks and how come it let me upgrade from basic to Dynamic?

Any help you can give me on this would be greatly appreciated.
 
I dont think 2600's can boot via san ... i have only seen diskless blades do that.

Why not just run your D drive off the san, and leave all but two disks in the server for the OS?
 
The main issue stems from the fact that the servers and software are already established. The SAN was added after the fact.

At this point in time, it would be too late to wipe and reinstall the software.

The only issue I have with running our databases on the SAN, is the fact that you then have a single point of failure. If the SAN goes out, you loose all of your database functionality. There are some services that we can do without for a time.

I think that the alternative now is to figure out how to back up to disk first, then run a tape of the disk backup.

That should give me redundancy for the data, just not the OS.

Thanks for your reply. I'd have gotten back sooner, but I've been out sick for 3 days. haha

I dont think 2600's can boot via san ... i have only seen diskless blades do that.

Why not just run your D drive off the san, and leave all but two disks in the server for the OS?
 
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