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Expand Raid5 Array on DL380G2 Cluster W/ MSA500

 
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Brian_470
Occasional Advisor

Expand Raid5 Array on DL380G2 Cluster W/ MSA500

I am running a clustered Exchange 2003 environment Active/Passive. Each DL380G2 has 2 drives(18.2GB) mirrored for the OS. The MSA500 has the following configuration:
Bay 1 - 18.2GB Drive
Bay 2 - 18.2GB Drive
Bay 3 - 36.4GB Drive
Bay 4 - 36.4GB Drive
Bay 5 - 36.4GB Drive
Bay 6 - 36.4GB Drive
Bay 7 - 36.4GB Drive
Bay 8 - 36.4GB Drive

Bay 1/2 is the cluster quorum
Bay 3/4/5 is the exchange logs
Bay 6/7/8 is the exchange store

I am wanting to expand the array on Bay 6/7/8 to add more storage. I would like to put 3 more 36.4GB drives in bay 9/10/11 and add that to the array. Is this possible?

Do I need to add another array controller in the other slot to be able to add drives to bay 8-14?
The array controller on the MSA500 has firmware 1.80. I am running the the Array Configuration Utility 7.60.18.0. I do not see an option to expand the array.


2 REPLIES 2
Thomas Martin
Trusted Contributor
Solution

Re: Expand Raid5 Array on DL380G2 Cluster W/ MSA500

Hello Brian,

there is an newer FW 1.90 for yout MSA500.
Make a good backup of your system.
After you add more disks in your storage system, you can see them in ACU.
Control the settings under "Controller settings" for the "Expansion Priority". Set it to Medium or High. A setting to Low will take some Days to expand. Settings with higher Priority will have some impact about EX-Performance.
Select your Array with disks in Bay 6/7/8. Then you see on the right side in ACU a button "Expand Array". Select the disks which you want to add to the Array. Click "OK". Now select the logical Volume which you want to expand. Click "Expand Logical Drive" and decide how much space you add. Follow the instructions. The expansion will take some hours, because all data on the 3 disks will distribute over all disks in the array.


After the expansions you can see in Disk Management behind the EX-Store partition free space. Sometimes you have to restart both Clusternodes to recognize the new capacity. After both nodes see the new space go to "command promt" and type diskpart. With this utility you can expand the partition under Windows. Read more Information how to expand a volume under MS Knowledge Base

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

This can be done online.

Thomas


Brian_470
Occasional Advisor

Re: Expand Raid5 Array on DL380G2 Cluster W/ MSA500

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for all your help.