How to change the RAID level on Dell Servers

This article is written for how to change the RAID level from RAID 1 to RAID 5 on Dell Servers. It doesn’t mean that you can do that on all Dell servers. Briefly, just find the official information which was shared by the vendors. If your RAID card lets you change your RAID level then this article suits your demand. In my case, our server was Dell R740 and it uses an H730P Mini RAID card. For more information about H730P click here.

As you see, my RAID card lets me online capacity expansion and online RAID level migration. So I can change my RAID level without losing any data. Please don’t forget to check out the official datasheets before starting this process on your Dell server.

I’m going to change the RAID level on the operating system layer with OMSA ( OpenManage Server Administrator) on Windows Server. It is also available to change the RAID level using the IDRAC.

Let’s start reviewing the RAID level by following the steps before jumping to convert the RAID level.

System > Storage > Your Raid Card Model > Virtual Disks

I see that our raid level is RAID 1, and its size is 446GB. Now we can check our physical disks by following the steps.

System > Storage > Your RAID Card Model > Your Connector where your RAID was set under it > Enclosure (Backplane) > Physical Disks

In my case, I have 4 disks and 2 of 4 were used for RAID 1. RAID 1 disks are seen Online in the Status column. Others are just ready to be joined the RAID 1 disk group and then turn into the RAID 5.

You were already here before as you know, and you see the All

System > Storage > Your Raid Card Model > Virtual Disks > Click on the Available Tasks in the Task column, then select the Reconfigure... and click on the Execute button as you see in the picture below.

We talked a lot let’s finish this article as soon as possible. Let’s follow the given steps below. Here we see the Online and Ready Disks that we saw in the previous pictures. In Reconfigure (Step 1 of 3) we choose the disk that we want to add our disk group and click on the Continue button.

In Reconfigure (Step 2 of 3), we choose what to do, in our case we change the RAID level from 1 to 5. So, I chose my new RAID level and clicked on the Continue button.

Here we see the new disk configuration like before and after. I see that what was my RAID level and what is going to be when I click on the Finish button. If everything fits your wish, then click on the Finish button to start the process.