EVA 6000 Expansion (online vs. offline)

[hemaphore]

We currently have an EVA 6000 that we use as the backend for our VMware Infrastructure. It holds about 56 VMs currently.
We plan to add more capacity to our EVA in the next couple of weeks and the HP Tech I spoke to said that most customers opt to add capacity while the system is offline vs. it being online.

My question is this: Is one better than the other? What are the risks when doing it online?

Thanks very much in advance.

[Víctor Cespón · Accepted solution]

It can be done online with minimal risks. The EVA6000 uses loop-switches, so it's a matter of adding a new disk enclosure and connect it to both loop switches.

Of course things can happen, one disk can disrupt one or both loops, you may purchase M5314C enclosures instead of M5314B and the new I/O modules cause trouble on the loops. I've seen cases of online upgrades going wrong, but mostly by human error.

[Patrick Terlisten]

Hello,

I can confirm was vcspon already said. Enclosure upgrades can be done online if you have a EVA 6x00 or 8x00. It can also be done online with an EVA 4x00, but AFAIK it's not supported, because there are no loop switches and you need to break up the daisy-chain cabling. I knew two cases in which a not properly seatet copper cable has brought down the whole EVA. So check those things twice before you proceed further.

Best regards,
Patrick

[Uwe Zessin]

> EVA 4x00, but AFAIK it's not supported,

It depends on the revision of the manual you check ;-)

Last time I've looked into it, it was supported. I did a number of online upgrades to EVA-3000 and EVA-4[01]00 and never had a problem (phew ;-)

As vcespon and Patrick said, things can go wrong, so it is very important to do this with one loop first and check the results before going to the other loop.