topic Re: Adding additional drives to MSA500 in Disk Enclosures

Adding additional drives to MSA500

David Yocum — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:16:05 GMT

I'm needing assistance with adding new hard drives to MSA500. Currently it's setup as follows: Parallel SCSI Array A ([3] 72.8 Gb drives in slots 12-13-14 RAID 5); Parallel SCSI Array B ([3] 72.8 Gb drives in slots 9-10-11 RAID 5); Parallel SCSI Array C ([2] 36.4 Gb drives in slots 1-2 RAID 1). I need to add 3 more drives to ARRAY A and 2 more to ARRAY B. I'm using ACU ver.7.50.23.0 , What steps do I take?

Re: Adding additional drives to MSA500

Albatross — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 10:11:39 GMT

Hi David,

You can add the disk drives to the enclosure, one at a time with ~1 minute wait is a good idea. After each insertion check Array Config Utility-->Physical View to verify the new drives.

After that, you may assign each of the new drives to their corresponding array, you should use the ACU User Guide at: http://docs.hp.com/en/9320/acu.pdf , page 24

----------------------------

1. Click Controller Settings, and verify that the Expand Priority setting is acceptable.
2. Back up all data on the array. Although array expansion is unlikely to cause data loss, observing
this precaution provides additional data protection.
3. Click Expand array, and then click Begin.
4. Choose the array that you want to expand, and then click Next.
5. Select the physical drives that you want to add to the array, and then click Next.
6. Click Finish to accept the changes.
At this point (before clicking Save in the next step), you can create logical drives on the unused
space created by the expansion. You can also arrange to expand another array on the same
controller by repeating the previous steps. However, the controller can expand only one array at a
time. Remaining array expansions are queued.
7. Click Save.
The controller now rearranges (re-stripes) the existing logical drives and their data so that they
extend over all the physical drives in the enlarged array.
-------------------

Finally double check your OS compatibility *before* doing a Logical Drive Extension.

Hope it helps,

Sergio

Re: Adding additional drives to MSA500

David Yocum — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:08:57 GMT

One last question on this topic:

It states that it will take about 15 min per each Gigabyte to expand the array.

Q: Will the data still be accessable during the expansion? Could I do this while users are online?

Re: Adding additional drives to MSA500

KarloChacon — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 20:45:55 GMT

hi

""
Q: Will the data still be accessable during the expansion? Could I do this while users are online?""

of course that is a completely online activity(expand and extend)

you can do it while people are using the server don't worry about that

HP always recommend to have backup and please do this have the latest firmware for the controller and also if you have available a more recent ACU than 7.5 download it also

*** see the attached file page 4 explains the process (expand and extend) on a exchange server (a kind of server that can not be offline) so don't worry is an online process

regards

Re: Adding additional drives to MSA500

David Yocum — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:27:48 GMT

Hi Karlo,
Thank you for the instructions. All seemed to work fine, however the end result looks different.
I followed the instructions using the ACU.. No problems. Followed the instructions using DISKPART... No apparent issues seen.
The concern I have is when I go and check on the partition through Disk Manager I see (2) D: partitions. (Please see attached file). Although under MY COMPUTER is shows the the correct size.
Q: Is this because it was originally created as a Dynamic disk?
Q: Is it Stable as it is right now?
Q: Should I temporary migrate all data/permissions to a temp drive (ext hard disk) Kill both dynamic partitions, create a new big BASIC partition and put things back?

Thanks for the help,

David

Re: Adding additional drives to MSA500

David Yocum — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:31:42 GMT

Attached is a screen print of My Computer

Re: Adding additional drives to MSA500

Marek Nelec — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:32:36 GMT

David, everything is stable and OK, and the fact that you have drive D: spanned over 2 partitions is indeed caused by dynamic disk.
I don't know if you SHOULD backup data & permissions to another drive/tape and restore it to a single partition on a basic disk, but I know I WOULD do it :)

Re: Adding additional drives to MSA500

David Yocum — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:06:32 GMT

I agree... stable or not. I just don't like it either. Whoever created the array (my predecessor) messed up creating it as a dynamic disk. I'll leave it for now... and tackle it over the weekend.

Thank You!!

David

Re: Adding additional drives to MSA500

KarloChacon — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:52:14 GMT

yes as Marek says dont worry

everything look fine

regards