MSA2312i vdisk expansion SLOW

[Jon Vielhaber]

We just got a new MSA2312i for a client. I was testing out the expansion capabilities to ensure that everything goes smoothly when we need to expand down the line. I created a 6x1TB 7200 drives RAID-6. It took about 4 days to create (what I thought was forever). I tested creating and mapping the volumes, expanding the volumes under Windows, etc. Everything went smoothly. I'm trying to expand the vdisk from 6 drives to 8 drives, and it is taking FOREVER. At 28 hours in, it's only at 3% completed, which puts the completion time at the current rate in the 30-40 DAYS range! Over a month! Is that right? Is there anything to do to speed it up? There is currently no activity on the drives. I'm going to cancel it, delete the vdisk and just create a new one, but it would be nice to know for the future.

Thanks,
Jon

[QuimaxW]

I'm noticing similar behavior from our MSA2312i.  Adding 3x2TB drives into a RAID 5 and expanding the vdisk. I'm about 23 hours into it and still at only 2%.

I went poking around the CLI to see if I could 'cancel' the expansion, and saw this message in the 'help expand vdisk':

Caution: Vdisk expansion cannot be stopped and can take days to complete, depending on disk type, RAID level, and other factors.

Yea!