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So, I added new drive to Dell R610 and in BIOS management RAID management cannot place it, the only option I have available is HOT SPARE online option are greyed out. As a HOT SPARE DISK is unusable. Any ideas what to do to put the spare disk online?

Nroot
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    Could you clarify what you want to do with this additional drive: extend an existing raid array, create a new one (raid0)? Also what disk controller (aka Raid adapter) do you have ? – sfk Mar 31 '17 at 13:58
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    I would second the questions from @sfk - we need to know the intended purpose of the drive, or some idea of what end goal you're trying to accomplish. Give this a read too when you get a chance: http://serverfault.com/help/how-to-ask – JimNim Mar 31 '17 at 14:06

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The inability to place a newly-installed physical disk "online" from a PERC controller is normal. Placing the drive online would require that it already has RAID configuration.

If you wish to create a new single-disk volume for storing data, you'll need to create a new RAID-0 virtual disk (press F2 with the PERC highlighted in VD Mgmt) and select the new drive when creating it.

If your goal is to add this drive to an existing Virtual Disk for capacity expansion, this cannot be done from within the PERC BIOS interface. You would need to use OpenManage Server Administrator from within the operating system to accomplish that.

JimNim
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  • I have one virtual drive and RAID0, I am adding new drive simply to increase space, since I only have one drive out 8 possible. The one I have is 500gb and I am adding another one 1 gb drive. It's not the identical drive so I am not sure firmware updated might be needed I ve never done it. Also on that one drive that I have its VMWARE ESXI so I don't really wanna mess it up. – Nroot Mar 31 '17 at 20:46
  • Jim, I have one drive installed and it's running as RAID0, the problem is I can't do anything such as choose, F2 option and added to excising RAID because these options are not available for new drive. Only think I can do with it is to place as HOT SWAPPED which is useless. – Nroot Mar 31 '17 at 20:48
  • Are you trying to add capacity to the existing virtual disk, or at it as a new VMFS datastore on its own? – JimNim Mar 31 '17 at 22:34
  • Jim, I understand that for me to be able to add disk capacity to my existing RAID0 array I would need to backup the data and recreate the RAID ARRAY including the newly added disk (which is impossible because I cannot even bring it online), so I am trying to bring the second drive online if this is possible and I am asking how can I do it, and create independent 2 virtual drive with RAID 0 on disk 2. – Nroot Apr 01 '17 at 16:39
  • You don't bring new drives online as a first step. The first step is to assign them to a virtual disk. In the PERC BIOS, that means creating a NEW virtual disk on the controller and choosing the new drive as its member. – JimNim Apr 01 '17 at 16:41
  • That I cannot do either, because in PERC BIOS i don't have new drive as visible physical drive thus I don't have a option to create virtual drive from it. I thought I have to bring it online first, but you saying it other way around. – Nroot Apr 01 '17 at 19:24
  • Are you saying the newly added drive isn't even listed on the physical disks page/tab? Or is it? What status does it show for the new drive? – JimNim Apr 01 '17 at 19:26
  • Right it is not listed on VD MGMT TAB as physical drive, but when I to ctrl N and moving to second tab which is PD MGMT I can make this drive blink to be identified and also I can make as a hotspare drive, but that is all. – Nroot Apr 01 '17 at 19:49
  • The drive would not be listed in VD MGMT unless you assigned it to a VD. That is done by CREATING a NEW VD (F2 with the controller highlighted). What is the status of the new drive in PD MGMT? – JimNim Apr 01 '17 at 20:29