Reduce logical drive size?

[CA1111521]

I have an MSA1000 that had 8 drives configured as RAID5. I added six drives and intended to migrate to ADG, but now that the logical drive has been extended into the space, ADG is no longer an option (apparently I misunderstood what was happening and did things in the wrong order). Since I have not extended my Windows volume into the space (but it does show up in Disk Administrator), is there a way to get ACU to free up one of the drives so that I can use ADG? It'll work as-is, but having just one parity drive in an array of 14 scares me.

Thanks,

Troy

[Uwe Zessin · Accepted solution]

It is not possible to shrink an existing logical disk (and if you have multiple logical disks within a disk drive array you have to delete them in reverse order). Looks like you have to backup your data and recreate the logical disk.

[CA1111521]

"Looks like you have to backup your data and recreate the logical disk."

Bleah. I can't take the system down for two days just for that, so I'll live with it as-is and know better next time.

Thanks again,

Troy

[Uwe Zessin]

You could connect an additional disk drive enclosure, but for just one disk I am not sure your boss will be happy.

[CA1111521]

He already knows what I did and chalked it up to a learning experience. By this time next year we'll need another enclosure (which we'll set up as a new array), so I might be able to move the existing data there and fix my screwup.

We have Mylex controllers on some of our other servers and the software for them has SMTP capability for error alerts. So far I've not found similar functionality for the MSA1000 or the DL380 it's hooked to. Are you aware of any software that can give us an administrative alert for a drive failure?

[Uwe Zessin]

The MSA1000 can be monitored with the Insight Manager on some operating systems, but I never did that myself, sorry. I hope somebody else will tell us about his experience.