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Array Expansion Time

 
Todd Hintz
New Member

Array Expansion Time

I'm about to embark on a Great Adventure and expand an array and have a few questions on the operation.

-Any estimates on how long it will take at low, medium, and high priority?
-Would it be better to expand the existing array or whip up a new one?

Setup:
Controller: 642
Firmware: v2.58 (I plan to bump it to 2.80 before rolling)
Drives: 300 gig 10k SCSI
Existing array: 1.4 tb with one spare
Expansion: double to 2.8 tb

The docs I've dug up indicate it would take roughly 40 days at low priority to get the job done. High priority is a little tougher to find, but I saw one posting that indicated you might get 15 minutes per gig, which would mean 30 days. That would be pretty rough on the users as this is our primary file server. While I'm not above abusing the rank and file, 30 days is a little long even for my cold heart.

Any advice, tips, or data?

Thanks!
-Todd
2 REPLIES 2
Rob Leadbeater
Honored Contributor

Re: Array Expansion Time

Hi Todd,

I've no real experience, however I do recall an old thread which discussed something similar.

With low priority (IIRC) the array expansion will only start if there is a period of no activity on the controller, which could explain the high length of time...

Your other option of course, is to simply trash the array and restore from your verified backup, which you'd have done before attempting to expand the array, just in case something went wrong. Depending on your backup device, 1.4TB should come back reasonably quickly - and a lot quicker than 30 days !

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob
Todd Hintz
New Member

Re: Array Expansion Time

Rob,

Thanks for the reply. If I wiped out the array and rebuilt it I would be looking at a solid seven days of build time due to the amount of data and the speed of our backup system. That would be pretty rough on the users considering 90% of our data resides there. I'll wait the 40 days for the stripping to get done.

-Todd