RAID Conversion Function in Storage Manager

Changing RAID Level or RAID Protection Hot Spare level requires all RAID protection to be stopped and restarted.

This is a long running process and leaves the system vulnerable to a single disk failure during the process.

This is exacerbated by the fact that both the stop and start RAID processes stress the disks and so are more likely to cause a disk failure on disk units being converted

Add function in the storage manager to allow change to raid level.
E.g. Migrate from RAID5 to RAID6 without stopping RAID5 first.

Additional Request:
During the Discussion with CEAC the idea that this function could also be used to re-balance the RAID stripes in an existing RAID set.

This would address a common scenario where a client buys a server with a RAID array active, then adds additional disks at a later time creating additional array(s).

For Example. A client purchases a server with eight disks configured in a single eight disk RAID5 array. At some point in the future they need more storage so add another four disks in a second array. They now have two RAID arrays, one containing eight disks and the other with four. This tool could be used to re-balance the arrays either making two arrays of six disks, one array of twelve or even three arrays of four. By doing so they would avoid potential disk imbalances and resulting poor I/O performance.