Expanding a Virtual Disk

Sometimes it is necessary to expand a Virtual Disk because of space issues. Some of Dell’s higher end RAID controllers have the option to Reconfigure a Virtual Disk to add space and add more disks to an existing Virtual Disk.

Some things to note:

RAID Level Migration (RLM)
You can change from one RAID level to another RAID level (IE: 1 to 5)
You can only migrate from single-level to single-level array (0,1, 5, 6)
Cannot migrate multi-level/spanned arrays (10, 50, 60)

Here is how to add a disk to a RAID 5 Virtual Disk using OpenManage Server Administrator:
NOTE: Create a backup before completing the below steps!!!

In OMSA, expand Storage > PERC XXX > Virtual Disks

Select the Virtual Disk you are trying expand and click Reconfigure from the Tasks drop down menu and press Exectute

Select the disks that you would like to add to the Virtual Disk. Here I added 0:1:7 and 0:1:8. Note how they say Free because they are not in use. Then check the boxes in the right hand column and press Continue

I want to keep this Virtual Disk as a RAID 5, so I left that as RAID 5 and pressed Continue.

The next page will show you what your current Virtual Disk looks like and what you are updating to. Press Finish to start the expansion.
(NOTE: This will take several hours or possibly all day to complete and will cause a performance hit to read/write speeds while this process is taking place

You can monitor the progress of the expansion