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Re: Expand Array

 
Carl Behrent
Occasional Contributor

Expand Array

Windows 2000 Server
HP ProLiant DL380 G3
Disk Config: 2 x 18GB, 4 x 36GB (Raid1, Raid5)

Wa are wanting to increase the disk space size in the Raid5 array.
Is it as simple as removing one 36GB drive, inserting the new larger disk, want for the array to rebuild, then repeat the process for the other disks until its completed?
Any documentation on how to do this procedure?
4 REPLIES 4
Shameer.V.A
Respected Contributor

Re: Expand Array

Hi Carl,
Unfortunately your Idea will not work. If you are putting a higher capacity disk on an array which is of lower capacity disk, you will get only the lower capacity& balance on new disk will be waste.

Please go through the following thread with similar concern.

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=993564

Hope these informations will help you.

Regards,

Shameer
.... See invisible, feel intangible and achieve impossible as everything is possible ....
Uwe Zessin
Honored Contributor

Re: Expand Array

I have never tried that myself, but as far as I can tell, that should work.

After the last disk drive has been replaced and rebuilt, you should see free space at the end of the disk drive array in ACU. You can use this space to create another logical disk or extend the existing RAID-5 one.

Finally, you need to extend the partition and the file system on the Windows server. There is a utility called DISKPART, but if I remember correctly, you need to be on a fairly recent service pack level of Windows 2000 for this to work properly.
.
Steven Clementi
Honored Contributor

Re: Expand Array

Carl:

I have done this many times with a Smart Array Controller and totally agree with Uwe.

Replace the disks one at a time. Once the last disk is replaced, you will see the newly available disk space via ACU and be able to extend your logical drives. Once Extended, you can use diskpart to extend partitions.


For diskpart to work correctly on Windows 2000...
1. Make sure you are using the Windows 2000 version, From the Windows 2000 resource kit.
2. Make sure you have Service Pack 4 installed OR the diskpart hotfix.

Click here for more details on diskpart.exe...

" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325590/en-us "

and here...

" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841650/en-us "

and here...

" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304736/en-us " (For clustered servers)

For additional reading pleasure...

" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329826/ "

and here to download diskpart.exe for WIndows 2000...

" http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0fd9788a-5d64-4f57-949f-ef62de7ab1ae&DisplayLang=en "


Steven
Steven Clementi
HP Master ASE, Storage, Servers, and Clustering
MCSE (NT 4.0, W2K, W2K3)
VCP (ESX2, Vi3, vSphere4, vSphere5, vSphere 6.x)
RHCE
NPP3 (Nutanix Platform Professional)
Brett  Hill
New Member

Re: Expand Array

I'm thinking that you're going to save yourself a whole lot of time if you have the ability to backup your system with software such as Veritas or Ghost even.

Let me explain. Imagine all the time it's going to take to swap out all your disk drives and then on top of that, to expand your logical drive, it's gonna take a lot more time. I know from experience with the expanding part cause I just did it on my DL380 G3 server. We had 4 72GB hard drives in a RAID 5 build. We wanted to add capacity and so we bought 2 more 72GB hard drives and put them in. That was the easy part..LOL. There is a document for the Smart Array 5i that says expansion can take 10-15 minutes per Gigabyte depending on your system configuration. Well, believe it. We started the Expansion from 4 to 6 disks on Saturday and it just finished up today (Thursday). But it's not completely finished. It is now running Background Parity Initialization.

So, you see, with what you want to do, it will be a very long drawn out process.

I would just backup your drives to a ghost image on another server, Insert all your new higher capacity disks while removing the lower capacity ones (cause they all need to be the same size or the raid will be as big as the smallest sized drive), and then create a brand new RAID 5 and load the ghost image back down onto it. Voila! You're done! No expansion time and no background parity initialization time. Granted, it might take you a Saturday to do it depending on how much data you have.