Vdisk Expansion process is taking forever.

[ArAgOnHaMz]

Hi,

I have an MSA2000 with two storage controllers.  One of the vdisk is having 7 drives and i inserted a new disk where it started the process of  expansion using RAID 6. Now the expansion process is now just 40% completed after almost two weeks. My question is,

Right now everything is shutdown, only the one enclosure having this vdisk is swithc on. Is there any ways that i can fasten the process?. 

Can i run the machine even if the process is undergoing?

What happens if i restart the machine and will the expansion process resumes?

Regards,

Hamar

[AnkitM]

No, we can not increase the priority of the vdisk expansion process.
Expansion can take hours or days to complete, depending on the vdisk’s RAID level and size, disk speed, utility priority, and other processes running on the storage system. You can stop
expansion only by deleting the vdisk.

You can bring the Host Online while Expansion is running but it will slow down the expansion even more, if its not stuck!

[ArAgOnHaMz]

To bring back the Host Online, i need to restart everthing, Will it affect the expansion process?

I dont care if the process becomes slower after i have started the machine, atleast i need to run some programs now.

Thanks in advance

hamar

[Torsten.]

The raid expansion of a MSA2000 g3 is slow, but even 10 times faster than a G2 (this is what you have).

There are 2 recommendations I'm aware of to make it faster:

1) stop host access
2) backup data, delete the raid, re-create the raid, restore your data

In most scenarios, (2) will be the fastest.


However, still at 40%?

I think if you just start up your servers now you can continue to work, even without restarting the msa.

[ArAgOnHaMz]

If i recreate the raid, can you assume the time taken compared with this expansion procedure?
It is just 48% now. Anyways, i guess i can just start the servers. I will have to see what happens.
Thanks for your time and effort.

[Torsten. · Accepted solution]

The msa2000 g2 controllers are not the most powerful ... if you write data, the controller needs to calculate the parity all the time, and now the same for the expansion process. This takes time ... just et it run, if the timme needed is not a concern.