I have a test server (PE 1950 III). I would like to run both a Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V environment with VMs as well as a ESXi 5.x environment with VMs. This is strictly for test. Its my understanding that PERC 5/i writes metadata to the disks in terms of the RAID configuration you configure.
My disk sets are:
- 2x 160GB 5400 RPM SATA drives (ESXi 5.x) - RAID 1
- 2x 500GB 5400 RPM SATA drives (Server 2012 R2) - RAID 1
I would like to be able to swap between disk sets using the same server. Thus the disk sets will always see the same CPU/memory/controller and firmware revs.
My only concern is whether the RAID configuration will be lost on a given set of disks when I swap in the other set. Will I have to reconfigure the PERC 5/i configuration everytime I swap between #1 and #2 disk sets above ?
Obviously, I will shutting current environment cleanly and powering off before swapping to the other disk set. I will also ensure disks in slot 0 and 1 are always re-inserted back into their corresponding slots in the chassis.
This is for testing and staging so the data is not critical but I don't really don't want to destroy the already staged OS/VM configs on these disks but I only have one test server to work with.
So will I have to reconfigure PERC 5/i everytime I swap the disk sets? or is the system intelligent enough to pull the necessary data from the disks and boot up transparently. ?
Thanks in advance, /rw