HP DL320e Gen8 – Resolving 3TB Drive Capacity Issues on Windows Server 2012 R2

hp-prolianthp-smart-arraypartitionraid1windows-server-2012-r2

One interesting task to do but not so easy as i thought.

The server is HP DL320e gen8, The main difficulty is with partitioning the RAID1 (2x3TB HDDs) during the installation on 2 partitions (System = 200GB and Data = the rest of the space ~ 2.7TB) and all this under Windows Server 2012 R2 installation.

I tried using Diskpart on the partitioning step of the installation, by converting the drive to GPT and creating all the needed partitions for the system, but with no availability to continue the installation using this partitioning method.

And doing all this I think it's going to a dead end …

If someone have any suggestions I'd be rather happy to discuss them. Thank you in advance!

Best Answer

One commonly overlooked feature of HP Smart Array RAID controllers is the ability to create multiple logical drives on the same group of physical disks (array)...

This is mainly because the BIOS-based Option ROM Configuration of Arrays (ORCA) utility doesn't have this functionality, so many people miss out on the enhanced feature set.

The example below shows 4 x 900GB disks in an array, carved into a 72GB RAID 1+0 OS drive and a 500GB RAID 1+0 data drive. (You can also mix RAID levels on the same group of disks!)

Smart Array P420i in Slot 0 (Embedded)    (sn: 00143802113BC70)

   array A (SAS, Unused Space: 2262353  MB)


      logicaldrive 1 (72.0 GB, RAID 1+0, OK)
      logicaldrive 2 (500.0 GB, RAID 1+0, OK)

      physicaldrive 1I:2:1 (port 1I:box 2:bay 1, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:2:2 (port 1I:box 2:bay 2, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:2:3 (port 1I:box 2:bay 3, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:2:4 (port 1I:box 2:bay 4, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)

   SEP (Vendor ID PMCSIERA, Model SRCv8x6G) 380 (WWID: 500143802113BC7F)

What I would do in your case is load the HP SSA offline bootable DVD and create a logical drive for your operating system. Load it.

You can then choose to create another logical drive (or more) for your data. Each HP Smart Array Logical Drive presents a new block device to the operating system.

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