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Re: P4000 VSA How to increase cluster size ?

 
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JJ-A
Occasional Contributor

P4000 VSA How to increase cluster size ?

Hello,

 

On each of the 2 DL380 the 4x300Gb RAID5 disks gives me now insufficient storage.

 

To increase I added another disk to each physical array, thus (5x300)x2, i.e seen as 1117x2 Gb in Array Config Utility.

 

Problem is P4000 Management Console remains to 780Gbx2, it does not automatically  discovers and adjusts to the new size :-/

 

Added : CMC Edit volume shows up less than 2 GB of available space, the 2 VSA virtual machine configuration interface do not give any other access than password or TCP settings.

 

Thanks for any help to do it or find a way out of this issue.

Jean-Jacques
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JJ-A
Occasional Contributor
Solution

Re: P4000 VSA How to increase cluster size ?

Found out ! ... and feeling blind a bit and stupid a lot :-)

 

The added storage capacity had not to be claimed from the P4000 CMC, neither the VSA virtual machine config utility, but simply be obtained by using the increased free storage for the VSA vmdk file...

 

Matter of stress.

 

Hope it will help.

Jean-Jacques
Scot_
Visitor

Re: P4000 VSA How to increase cluster size ?

Hi, I'm having a similar issue...  Don't seem to figure out what to do...

 

We have two HP PRoliant ML350's, each had 4 x 300 Gb disks in RAID 5.  We added another 4 disks to each server, expanded RAID and increased the logical volume.  Both ESXi machines were able to expand the VMFS volume.  After that we resized the virtual disk of each VSA to 1.9 TB. 

 

From in the CNC we see that both VSA's have a disk of 1.9 TB, however the clusterd volume remains at 800 Gb and I don't find a way to increase this volume or to use the left space on both VSA's. 

 

I one document I read that we should remove the VSA's one by one from the management group.  Then increase the disk size and add it again to the management group.  We are not able to remove the VSA from the management group or remove it from the cluster.  I'm feeling quite stupid, this last step is blocking me from using the added storage. 

 

Kr,

Scot

oikjn
Honored Contributor

Re: P4000 VSA How to increase cluster size ?

I can't remember last time I did it how I did it.  try rebooting the node to see if it reclaims it.  I think it will take some time before it actually says its used.  It not, I think at one point I also got more space by just adding a 2nd HDD to the VSA.

 

All else fails, ask support :)  you pay them... make them work for it.

 

 

Side note, you have to have the same storage on all nodes for it to be used.  If you only add the space to one, it will show up as space on the drive, but not available as storage.

 

 

Scot_
Visitor

Re: P4000 VSA How to increase cluster size ?

Both nodes were rebooted, also the FOM got rebooted.  Like you mention indeed, the disk size of each node shows the size that every VSA's virtual disk size has been granted in ESXi.  The clustered volume however remains the same, don't find a way to increase the size at all.

 

Unfortunately my customer does not have a support contract for the VSA's...  So i'm pretty much stuck for something that is rather basic, compared on other similar platforms.

oikjn
Honored Contributor

Re: P4000 VSA How to increase cluster size ?

on the storage node, what does the "usable space" show?  If everything is correct, it should be a little smaller than what the Raw Space shows.

 

Can you fill out:

 

Node1

  Raw Space:

  Usable Space:

 

Node2

  Raw Space:

  Usable Space:

 

Cluster

  Total Space:

 

 

 

 

Scot_
Visitor

Re: P4000 VSA How to increase cluster size ?

Node1

  Raw Space: 1.9 Tb

  Usable Space: 780 Gb

 

Node2

  Raw Space: 1.9 Tb

  Usable Space: 780 Gb

 

Cluster

  Total Space: 780 Gb

 

 

 

The usable space on both the VSA's shows the real virtual disk size, 1.9 Tb.  The usable space still shows the volume that was initially created, 780 Gb. 

 

In the documentation and the posts that I read, it says to remove every VSA one bye one from the management group.  Once you have'm out of the management group, you can right click on the Storage and 'configure RAID'.  At that point it will resize from 780 Gb to 1.9 Tb.  You always lose about 2.5 Gb for the VSA it's self. 

 

The main issue I'm not able to pass however is getting a VSA out of the management group.  In the meantime I built up a test environment on my machine on VMware Workstation.  That allows me to play around and simulate actions without messing up the production system.

 

So what i figured out untill now is that to get a machine out of the management group, it first needs to be removed from the cluster.  This is not possible from in the CMC, it says it requires the space.  So there I get stuck.  I first took out the FOM out of the management group, that worked fine.  Next I started a virtual manager, in order to maintain the VIP on the cluster to take out.

 

What I did next, which i'm sure is not conventional, is remove it from the management group, using the Console of the VSA.  That works fine.  The VSA can be taken out, you can do the raid configuration but there remains a system in the cluster reflecting the VSA you took out.  In other words something reamins in the cluster configuration.  I can reconfigure the raid, add the VSA back to the management group and later add it again to the cluster.  But than I created another situtation, as the cluster thinks it has 3 VSA's.  The added storage can't be used in total for some reason.

In the test environment I created two VSA's with a data disk of each 6 GB.  They had a usable volume of about 3,7 Gb.  The clusterd volume had 3.6 Gb of usable storage.  By removing one VSA, using the console of the VSA instead of the CMC.  I was able to get it out, upgrade the disk to 10 Gb.  The VSA said it had 7.6 Gb of usable storage.  Once i added it back in to the management group, then into the cluster, I was also able to remove the other VSA.  Did the same procedure, it also ended up with 7.6 Gb of usbale storage.  At that point I could edit the clusered volume but I'm losing storage there for some reason.  I was not able to modify the cluster volume from 4.7 Gb to 7.6 Gb, it ended up with 5.9 Gb for some reason I can't understand.

Scot_
Visitor

Re: P4000 VSA How to increase cluster size ?

Am I the first person on this planet running into an extension on a VSA?  Quite hard to believe.

oikjn
Honored Contributor

Re: P4000 VSA How to increase cluster size ?

I don't have time to test and can't remember exactly how I did it, but you can either destroy the raid in the VSA and then it gives you the option to repair the storage of the node, or you just spool up a new VSA and do a node swap (assuming you have the extra Raw storage capacity available). Its annoying there isn't a more elegant way, but for whatever reason HP didn't want to give the VSAs the option for changing storage online.  I assume the assumption is that any one node is expendable so there is little value to doing any node work on-line (not that I agree with this though, but its the only reason I can think why wouldn't include it as a standard feature).

ssuhail
Occasional Advisor

Re: P4000 VSA How to increase cluster size ?

I am in a situation where I want to increase the SAN size.  Do i follow the below steps

 

  1. Remove the VSA from the management group.

 

  1.  In the CMC, re-configure RAID on the VSA.

 

 

  1. Add the VSA to the existing “CHENMGMT” management group and “CHEN-cluster” cluster. And once VSA is reinserted, will there be any indications that it has successfully spread the data to this newly inserted VSA.

 

  1. Repeat these steps one at a time for each of the three VSA.

 

 

Thanks.