Back to Storage Management Contents Page

Moving Physical and Virtual Disks from One System to Another

Dell OpenManage™ Server Administrator Storage Management User's Guide

  Required Conditions

  Migrating SCSI Virtual Disks to Another System

  Migrating SAS Virtual Disks to Another System

This section describes how to move physical and virtual disks from one system to another.

Required Conditions

This section applies to PERC 3/SC, 3/DCL, 3/DC, 3/QC, 4/SC, 4/DC, 4e/DC, 4/Di, CERC ATA100/4ch, PERC 5/E and PERC 5/i, and SAS 5/iR controllers

After some planning and preparation, it is possible to migrate physical and virtual disks from one controller, enclosure or server to another. You can perform physical and virtual disk migration on PERC 3/SC, 3/DCL, 3/DC, 3/QC, 4/SC, 4/DC, 4e/DC, 4/Di, CERC ATA100/4ch, PERC 5/E and PERC 5/i, and SAS 5/iR controllers as long as the following conditions are met.

General Conditions for SCSI and SAS Controllers

SCSI Controller Conditions

NOTE: The current version of Storage Management does not support the PERC 2, 2/Si, 2/SC, or 2/DC controllers.

SAS Controller Conditions

Migrating SCSI Virtual Disks to Another System

This section applies to the PERC 3/SC, 3/DCL, 3/DC, 3/QC, 4/SC, 4/DC, 4e/DC, 4/Di, 4e/Si, 4e/Di, and CERC ATA100/4ch controllers

The following describes how to migrate virtual disks and volumes from one system to another. Completing the migration requires the following activities:

Moving the Disks

  1. Shut down the system that the physical disks are being moved from.

  2. If the receiving controller has a preexisting virtual disk configuration on attached physical disks, use the following procedure for clearing the configuration:

  3. If the receiving controller does not have a preexisting virtual disk configuration, then shut down its server.

  4. Place the physical disks into the new enclosure.

  5. Start up the system connected to the receiving controller. When the system connected to the new enclosure comes up, use the BIOS access (Ctrl-M) to update the controller configuration with the information saved on the physical disks. Exiting the BIOS access will require one more reboot of the system.

  6. The migration is complete. The virtual disk is now manageable through Storage Management.

  7. Continue with "Saving the New Controller Configuration".

Saving the New Controller Configuration

Use the following procedure to enter the controller BIOS configuration screens to save the new configuration.

  1. Reboot the PowerEdge™ server.

  2. Enter the PowerEdge RAID Controller BIOS by pressing Ctrl+M when prompted during the power on self test (POST) of the controller during the bootup sequence.

  3. Select the Configure menu option and press Enter.

  4. Select View/Add Configuration and press Enter.

  5. This will read the data on the physical disks to restore the RAID controller's proprietary configuration information. Press Esc and save the new configuration when prompted.

  6. Press the Esc key and save the new configuration when prompted.

  7. Reboot the system.

Migrating SAS Virtual Disks to Another System

The following describes how to migrate virtual disks and volumes from one system to another.

  1. Shut down the system that the physical disks are being moved from.

  2. If the receiving controller does not have a preexisting virtual disk configuration, then shut down its server.

  3. Place the physical disks into the new enclosure.

  4. Start up the system connected to the receiving controller.

  5. Use the "Import Foreign Configuration" task to import the migrated virtual disks on the receiving controller.

The migration is complete. The virtual disk is now manageable through Storage Management.


Back to Storage Management Contents Page