Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller 9 User’s Guide H330, H730, and H830

Creating virtual disks

1. During host system bootup, press <Ctrl><R> after the BIOS screen is displayed.
   The Virtual Disk Management screen is displayed. If there is more than one controller, the main menu screen is displayed. Select a controller, and press <Enter>. The Virtual Disk Management screen is displayed for the selected controller.
2. Use the arrow keys to highlight the PERC 9 series of adapters, for example the PERC H730P Adapter or Disk Group #.
3. Press <F2>.
   A list of available actions is displayed.
4. Select Create New VD and press <Enter>.
   The Create New VD screen is displayed. The cursor is on the RAID Level option. When adding a virtual disk to a Disk Group, the Add VD in Disk Group screen is displayed. Skip to step 11 to change the basic settings of the virtual disk.
5. Press <Enter> to display the possible RAID levels.
6. Press the down-arrow key to select a RAID level and press <Enter>.
7. When creating a spanned virtual disk (RAID 50 or 60), enter the number of physical disks per span in the PD per Span field and press <Enter>.
8. Press <Tab> to move the cursor to the list of physical disks.
9. Use the arrow key to highlight a physical disk and press the spacebar, <Alt> , or <Enter> to select the disk.
10. Select additional disks, if required.
11. Press <Tab> to move the cursor to the Basic Settings box.
12. Set the virtual disk size in the VD Size field.
    The virtual disk size is displayed in GB format.
13. Press <Tab> to access the VD Name field, and type a virtual disk name.
14. Press <Tab> to move the cursor to Advanced settings
15. Press the spacebar to make the settings active so that you can change them.
    An X is displayed beside Advanced settings. The settings are the stripe size, read policy, write policy, and disk cache policy. You can also choose advanced options such as forcing the cache policy to Write-Back, initializing the virtual disk, and configuring a dedicated hot spare. The default parameters are displayed. You can accept the defaults or change them. To change the virtual disk parameters, see Virtual Disk Parameters and Descriptions in Setting up virtual disks.