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What options do I have for expanding and mirroring (Fault tolerance) for a dynamic disk in windows?
Long story short I am looking for the ability to add a variable number of disks to expand the size of a logical drive while keeping the ability to mirror it for fault tolerance. I need this to store a large (Like 20-40TB) worth of data and make sure I dont lose it all at the same time.
I have tried googling this but no straight answers. Any suggestions?
***More details as Requested.
*Quick Note, device only supports 4 drives but looking at a new machine possibly for more drive bay options. Disregarding any restrictions due to available drives at the moment. Little out of scope but also would like to add identical machines to further increase storage.
Currently using a simple hardware Raid1 setup on a Poweredge R410, this server has a hardware raid device. If required I can start fresh with the raid setup (Even if it wipes the data) and load the data back on from a backup. Just need a recommendation on the raid type and any relevant settings as I have no idea what raid (or nested raid) would fulfill my requirements listed.
h4344
Posted 2017-06-17T02:55:59.457
Reputation: 11
Added details, researching Raid 5+0 and Raid 6+0 now. – h4344 – 2017-06-18T01:20:43.453
Okay, so with 4 drive I would use a RAID 5 & have one of the 4 be used as the parity so space wise you lose I whole drive but you get the redundancy so if any of the 4 fail, you keep going until you swap out the failed drive & it's as easy as that. See: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/906/t/19638565 & see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdR_tuKJ9b0 but use a RAID 5 with NO hot spare and just have or purchase an additional drive for the hot spare beforehand or if one fails but I'd have one on hand beforehand just in case once it fails time is of the essence swapping it out
– Pimp Juice IT – 2017-06-18T02:49:54.803It that youtube video doesn't show you the options for your RAID configuration screen for what you see, just search youtube for RAID configuration for the make and model of the Dell server. You may find other Dell models may have something applicable as well but that should get you started and be sure to initial the array after you build it as well. – Pimp Juice IT – 2017-06-18T02:52:05.523
Also, in a RAID 5 with no hot spare plugged in, you would need each drive to be 10 TB each to get 30 TB as again, you lose the space for the 1 parity drive in a RAID 5 so just be sure each drive is large enough so 3 of them are in the disk capacity range you need & remember that 1 drive does not count for space, it's parity but you still get redundancy & if you have a hot spare sitting to the side of the same size drive, etc. then you'd be able to hot swap and let the RAID rebuild while still staying up & running regardless of which of the 4 drives fail. All drives should be the same size. – Pimp Juice IT – 2017-06-18T03:06:51.837
Did you find any of my comments helpful or what have you done? Since you say you can wipe the drives and restore the data from a backup, then do that. You say you have room for 4 drives but you are using a RAID 1 now so I assume that means you only have two drives but you only get the storage space of the capacity of one of those two in a RAID 1. So fill up all 4 bays with drives and carve those as a RAID 5 with one used for parity and no hot spare. This will give you the storage capacity of three of the drives so a potential 300% storage capacity increase. – Pimp Juice IT – 2017-07-02T04:53:55.083