How to create a virtual disk with the Dell OpenManage Server Admnistrator.

Open the Dell OpenManage Server Administrator

Click on System – Storage – PERC 5/E Adapter (PCI Slot 1) – Connector 0 (RAID) – Enclosure – Physical Disks.

This will display all the Disk Drives in the right window.

Under the column Available RAID DISK Space, you should be able to determine if there is any unused disk. Make a note of the name of the disks that are avaiable, this would be under the column Name. Such as “Physical Disk 0.0.0” and “Physical DISK 0.0.1”. You will need to this information when creating the RAID volume.

Go to Click on System – Storage – PERC 5/E Adapter (PCI Slot 1) – Connector 0 (RAID) – Virtual Disks. On the right screen you should see any existing virtual disks.

Click on Go To Create Virtual Disk Wizard, then click on Go To Advanced Wizard. You will be presented with the option to create Raid 0, Raid 1, Raid 5, Raid 10 and Raid 50. The options may differ depending on the firmware and type of PERC controller.

In this case I want to create a RAID 5 volume, which is striping with distributed parity. You need a minumum of 3 hard disks for Raid 5. The storage size equal to one disk is used for parity. So if you have 3 disks then the usable space is equal to the total of 2 disks.

Slect Raid 5 and click on Continue. This will display only the physical disks that are avaiable. Check all the Physical Disks that you wish to add to your virtual Disk, then click on Continue.

You can now give the virtual disk an optional name. Leave the defaults and click on Continue.

When creating virtual disk that is larger than 2 TB in size, you will be prompted with a warning message. “Please verify that your operating system, including any updates or modifications, supports a virtual disk of this size. Do you want to proceed?”. Click on OK to continue.

You will now be presented with the configuration summary. Click on Finish.

The new virtual disk should now appear in the list. Note the Device Name of the new virtual disk you just created, e.g. Windows Disk 2. You will need this information when configuring the new virtual disk in Windows Disk Management MMC. Under the progress column you will see the status of the new disk volume, this may take many hours to complete if the volume is many terra bytes large.