topic Re: Adding an in use array to a 2.0 group in Array Setup and Networking

Adding an In-Use Array to a 2.0 Group

Jgezels — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 14:55:09 GMT

Has someone already added an array that is in use to a new group?

I have 4 CS460s (2 on each site) and I updated all of the arrays to NOS 2.xxx

I want to add the 2 arrays on the same site to one group but these arrays are rather hard in use.

I know there is downtime involved when adding an array to a pool/group but I'm really curious in how long the operation will take.

I guess the adding will be rather quick (?!) but the rebalancing ofcourse will take time obviously.

Any thoughts on this are highly appreciated.

Thanks

Re: Adding an in use array to a 2.0 group

Nick_Dyer — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 17:00:49 GMT

Hello Jan,

In case you haven't seen it yet, Rich Fenton produced a good blog post on merging arrays together with NOS 2.0, which is available here.

There are a couple of networking prerequisites you will need first before being able to perform a merge. Firstly you must use Nimble Connection Manager on hosts that connect to the array, which is available for Windows 2008/2012 or VMware (Enterprise or Enterprise Plus licensing only).

Once your hosts have this installed you can then proceed to switching your networking from manual to automatic, and switching on "enable rebalancing". This will start creating new iSCSI connections to your volumes for you, which is essential for when arrays are merged & data starts to rebalance across the systems.

If all the above criteria has been met then you can go ahead and merge the systems. There is downtime for the array that is being subsumed into the group whilst the configuration is pushed across (this is seconds rather than minutes or hours), however remapping volume information to the hosts may take slightly longer. With a little bit of planning this outage can be kept relatively small.

Please dont hesitate to get in touch with support or your local SE who would be happy to walk you through this process. Ultimately though, if Nimble Connection Manager cannot be used then scale-out is not possible.

Re: Adding an in use array to a 2.0 group

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 18:17:21 GMT

Hi Nick

Indeed, I saw the blog and I understand it but I only need to know how long it "could" take when

you add, an array that is in production, to a group. I understand that the volumes on the array that is being added

go down and I need to know if it goes fast or not.

Thanks

Re: Adding an in use array to a 2.0 group

rugby0134 — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 21:24:15 GMT

It only takes a couple minutes to import all the merged arrays lun information into one. Then you will need to go the the hosts of the merged array and change the iSCSI discovery IPs. The entire process is documented here Nimble OS 2.0 Part 5: Merging Two Arrays into a Single Group - Smells Like Scaleout