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Re: BL460c G1 increasing mirror size

 
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rossb2
Frequent Advisor

BL460c G1 increasing mirror size

BL460C G1 with 2 140GB disks. I want to put in 2 300GB disks and mirror them without doing a software rebuild.

It has been suggested I could hot swap a disk, wait for the mirror to rebuild, then hot swap the second disk, and wait for that mirror to rebuild. Done the swap, but the systems reports 140GB mirror.

If I restart, will the server detect the larger disks and make a bigger mirror?. I guess then I could use windows OS to increase the data partition size using diskpart? Or would I need a third party tool like Acronis Disk Director? 10 points to best answer.
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rossb2
Frequent Advisor

Re: BL460c G1 increasing mirror size

just to clarify, I am looking to increase a data partition(D), not system/boot partition.
Matti_Kurkela
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: BL460c G1 increasing mirror size

The procedure you listed (hot swaps + rebuilds) is accurate, but incomplete. Getting the 300 GB disks in the system is just the first step.

When your mirror has been succesfully rebuilt for a second time and you have 2 300 GB disks in the blade, it is time to start up your SmartArray configuration utility. It should tell you that you have a 140 GB mirror AND about 2x 160 GB of unused space on your disks. At this point, this unused space is completely hidden from the OS: only the SmartArray itself knows it's there.

Now tell the SmartArray configuration utility to resize (extend) the mirror into that free space, so that all the free space is used by the mirror.

After that step is complete, the OS partition tools will still see a total of 140 GB of partitioned space, but now there should be about 160 GB of unpartitioned space available on the same logical disk, visible to your OS. Now you're ready to extend your data partition.

I'm not familiar with the disk management features of current versions of Windows (I'm more of a Linux/Unix guy), but a quick Googling seems to indicate that Windows Server 2003 (or newer) can extend partitions on-the-fly with diskpart.

MK
MK
rossb2
Frequent Advisor

Re: BL460c G1 increasing mirror size

Your description is exactly right. The windows 2003 OS sees the extended logical disk as having free space on the same disk. The data partition is then extended using diskpart.exe.