How to install additional drives in a BE7K to expand storage

[brycekoepke]

I'll start by saying my collaboration/datacenter knowledge is not a strong point. I'm trying to assist a customer and am having a hard time finding the right documentation.

The customer has existing BE7Ks for their collaboration suite. They are purchasing Contact Center and want to expand storage to allow call recordings to be stored locally. The BE7K comes with the Cisco UCS C240 M4. They are purchasing the additional HDDs to fill out the UCS. BE7Ks ship with 12 drives on a 16 slot chassis. I am looking for guidance (preferably step by step instructions) on how to install the HDD into the UCS chassis. 

Any guidance is appreciated! 

[Kirk J]

Greetings.

There are some config items that should be determined:

The 4 drives, what kind of raid volume are you planning on?  4 drives can create raid 5,6, 10 with raid 5 having the largest amount of space.

Is this server running ESXi, with guestVM call manager servers/contact center guestVMs?

General steps:

• Insert 4 drives into open slots (make sure they are listed on the server's spec sheet)
• Go to CIMC Web GUI, Storage tab, create Virtual drive from available physical drives.
• You'll need to choose raid type, select all 4 drives you've added
• Set write-caching to 'write-back good bbu', read caching to 'aways read ahead'
• The OS will usually see the new VD as an additional drive.

I am assuming you want to create another raid volume vs expanding the existing ones (which is possible, but has some risk to it).

Once you confirm what OS you have, I will add some more details to the OS portion.

Thanks,

Kirk...