MSA200fc expanding LUN Volume and Windows 2008

[Michael A. McKenney]

I have a MSA 2012fc SAN. My OS partitions are 50GB for Windows 2003 R2. I am upgrading to Windows 2008 R2. I am adding a 3rd enclosure with 12 x 450GB drive. I want to expand the MSA Volumes and Windows 2008 C: drive to 110GB. What is the best way of doing it?

How can I move volumes from one RAID 10 array to the new RAID 10 array on the MSA 2012fc?

[TTr]

Expanding the volumes is a 3-step process.

1. Add drives to the raid array to increase the capacity.
2. Expand the logical disks (or create new logical disks)
3. Expand the OS partitions on the logical disks (or create new partitions).

Moving volumes within the array, may be easier to do it from the server. The MSA has also cloning features but you need an MSA license to use them.

[Michael A. McKenney]

1. Add drives to the raid array to increase the capacity.
2. Expand the logical disks (or create new logical disks)
3. Expand the OS partitions on the logical disks (or create new partitions).

Moving volumes within the array, may be easier to do it from the server. The MSA has also cloning features but you need an MSA license to use them.

Am I better off expanding the current array or adding a 4th array for performance? How do I expand the OS partitions on the logical drives? Or can I clone the partition to a larger space?

[TTr]

> Am I better off expanding the current array or adding a 4th array for performance?

Performance is affected by many factors. Number of drives in the array, size of drives, number of volumes, raid type, drive type, OS software, server usage (database, exchange), number of users etc.

First make a map (disk/raid layout) of the current setup.

For the OS partition, check if there is any unallocated space in the array.

Once the logical disk is expanded, the OS partiton is expanded within the OS. In Win2003 you use the diskpart.exe command (download from microsoft). I think win2008 has it included.

[Michael A. McKenney]

Arrays were expanded to full space. All Windows partitions completely fill the volume space of the SAN.

[Michael A. McKenney]

Windows 2008 allows you to expand partitions that don't have paging files. So you need to disable or move the paging file to expand.

How do I set the LUN Volume to dynamically grow with space let on the SAN. I have been considering allowing dynamic partitioning of Windows 2008.