MSA2012fc/dc - Adding more drives

[Michael Bird]

We have a MSA2012fc/dc with 5 of the disk slots populated as a RAID5 array. They are connected via dual SAN switches (the 8GB Simple San Connection Kit).

The system is used for VMWARE ESX 3.5 (for the storage of the VMDK files) which are accessed from two ESX servers and controlled by a load balancing server - all fibre linked.

I need to add more space for VMDKs so propose to add a further 7 drives to the MSA (to fill it up).

Having surfed around i cannot find a simple "do this .. do this .. do this" guide to the process.

While I have lots of pratical HP experience the last thing I want to have to consider is to completely rebuild the entire array.

I'm happy to add the extra disk as a new RAID-5 array with a hot spare, and to have the array accessivble to the VMWARE as a new data-store.

Any suggestions as to resources to look at ?

Much obliged.

[Ace Calderon]

as far as i know, if you want to increase the capacity or add disk to the array for MSA, you have to destroy the array and recreate array plus the additional HDD.you can search the doc thru HP website.

[Uwe Zessin]

Most RAID-levels of an MSA2000 series 'vdisk' (=array) can be expanded. After that, volumes in the vdisk can be expanded. There are some restrictions with VMware ESX 3x, though.

You can also create an additional vdisk and assign the management to the second controller (if there is one). This makes use of its CPU and memory.

This is described in the "2000 Family Modular Smart Array reference guide".

[Michael Bird · Accepted solution]

I've already downloaded the MSA guide 481599-003
Its clear in there that you can ADD disks to the existing RAID (and then the VDISK ) in varying quantities (RAID 5 lets you add 4 at a time).

So I don't have to destroy the array.

[Michael Bird]

Uwe - thanks - I have the reference guide - 481599-003 - makes for a nice long read (as usual with HP documentation).

Of course now I have a completely different problem.