Extending a logical disk on a msa1000 and windows 2003

[Robert Scheerhout_1]

Hi all.

I have a question.

I'm having disk space problems on one of our servers (Windows 2003). We have a MSA1000 with two array's configured as following:

Array A
Logical drive 1 99 MB
Logical drive 2 175 GB server1
Logical drive 3 56 gb server1
Logical drive 4 49 gb server2
Logical drive 5 50 gb server1
Logical drive 6 55 gb server3
Logical drive 7 44 gb server3
Unused space 21 GB

Array B
Logical drive 8 49 server2
Logical drive 9 49 server1
Logical drive 10 108 server1
Unused space 390 GB

To solve the problem i want to extend Lun 8 with 101 GB from the 390 unused space. so i have a total of 150 GB available on lun 8.

But can i just extend the LUN 8 with the Unused space (390 GB)? Does Windows 2003 just see the free disk space on the logical disk (LUN 8)or do i have to do more?

I hope someone can help me.

[Metadata]

Hi Robert

To extend the Windows partition. You have to use a utility like diskpart to extend the actual partition after you grow the logical drive on the MSA.
HP has produced Storage Volume Growth for this purpose. But you have you have to pay money for the HP solution. Here is a link to SVG

" http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storage/software/svg/index.html "

You can also complete the task with diskpart this is a free Microsoft Utility.

You can find more information about Diskpart from here...

" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325590/en-us "


Tom

[Robert Scheerhout_1]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your response.

I will lookin to the diskpart tool for extending the space in windows.

If i understand it right. I first have to extend the logical drive on the array. Then extend the space in windows with the diskpart tool. right?

cmd --> diskpart.exe
list volume

Volume 3 F Exchange-Al NTFS Partition 49GB Healthy

extend 3

exit

That's it?

And do you know if there is a way for a fall-back if the extending does not work?
Or is it only a back-up?

I hope to hear from you..

[Steven Clementi]

Robert:

"If i understand it right. I first have to extend the logical drive on the array. Then extend the space in windows with the diskpart tool. right?"

You got it.

When you run diskpart, which is included with Windows Server 2003, you have to first select the disk or volume you want to work with...

list disk and list volume and list partition

â ¦shows the available disks/volumes/partitions. Once you select the right volume, you have to then select a partition (I think you can skip this if the disk has only one partition).

useâ ¦
select disk
select volume
select partition

Once the disk/volume/partition is selected, just use "extend" without any additional parameters.

There is no failback except for a backup. The extension takes about 1 second to complete and should be done while there is less/no i/o or no heavy i/o. (disable the NIC temporarily?)

Click here for more info on diskpart...

" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415/en-us " (though for Windows XP, the 3 versions of diskpart have the same command set)


Steven