Add Drives to Raid 10

[Muhieddine]

Hello Everyone,

      Since I setup the server, ML350p Gen8, I have installed 16 drives of HP 300GB 10K, 8 for the P420i (integrated) and 8 for the addtional P420 (PCIe). Drives on channels 4 and 8 are hot spare drives on both controllers, and the others (1,2,3,5,6,7) are in Raid 10. Now i am running out of storage so just thought about adding the hot spare ones to the Raid, therefore gaining another 300GB for each controller, so my question is it possible to do it without any downtime (possibly command line) ? I know the normal procedure, reboot into ACU add the drives wait until the build is complete and then expanding the volumes, I can also move the machines to the iSCSI, rebuild the volume with all the drives (through command line) and move the machines back, but both solutions cosume too much downtime. Please note that I have the latest firmwares for all hardware components and I am running latest ESXi from HP.

Regards

[Muhieddine · Accepted solution]

Solved !

Login root to ESXi through SSH, run command to see check your configuartion:

    /opt/hp/hpssacli/bin/hpssacli ctrl all show config

I had the following:

Smart Array P420i in Slot 0 (Embedded)


   Port Name: 1I

   Port Name: 2I

   Internal Drive Cage at Port 1I, Box 1, OK

   Internal Drive Cage at Port 2I, Box 1, OK
   array A (SAS, Unused Space: 0  MB)


      logicaldrive 1 (838.1 GB, RAID 1+0, OK)

      physicaldrive 1I:1:1 (port 1I:box 1:bay 1, SAS, 300 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:2 (port 1I:box 1:bay 2, SAS, 300 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:3 (port 1I:box 1:bay 3, SAS, 300 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:5 (port 2I:box 1:bay 5, SAS, 300 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:6 (port 2I:box 1:bay 6, SAS, 300 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:7 (port 2I:box 1:bay 7, SAS, 300 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:4 (port 1I:box 1:bay 4, SAS, 300 GB, OK, spare)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:8 (port 2I:box 1:bay 8, SAS, 300 GB, OK, spare)

Then run this command to remove the spares from the array allocation:

    /opt/hp/hpssacli/bin/hpssacli ctrl slot=0 array all remove spares=1I:1:4,2I:1:8

The spares should now be unassigned in the controller status ie: first command

Then run this command to add the drives to the array:

    /opt/hp/hpssacli/bin/hpssacli ctrl slot=0 ld 1 add drives=1I:1:4,2I:1:8

Then in the controller status it will show Transforming, ESXi will also display the yellow status, also Transforming, which too about 4 Hrs to finish

Then run this command to resize the logical drive to maximum available

    /opt/hp/hpssacli/bin/hpssacli ctrl slot=0 ld 1 modify size=max forced

Go to vSphere Client, Rescan Storage adapter to check the new expanded volume mine was 1.1TB

Right click on the datastore and increase size just follow the wizard!

I didn't have to turn off any machine, nor reboot the server, just backed up the VMs just in case

[fawzi1]

Hello,

i know this is a very old post, but i could use some help.

i have a RAID 10 on HP DL360 G9 with P840r smart controller with latest revision.

i wanted to expand the RAID by expanding its individual drives since i do not have any room for more disks.

i checked to see which HDD were associated together in that RAID and replaced each one of them at a time waiting for each one to rebuild before replacing the other.

so now i have to 10TB associated drives, but the total capacity of the RAID did not increase.

so i ran your comand :

sudo ssacli ctrl slot=0 ld 4 modify size=max forced

but i got this error...

Error: This operation is not supported with the current configuration. Use the
       "show" command on devices to show additional details about the
       configuration.
       Reason: Space for transformation not available

any ideas on how to correct this?  i dont know that the sapce not avilable means.

[fawzi1]

Per HP support with the current controller and drivers, i can only  the array RAID 10 will only support same size HDD.  so even though i put in 2 10TB hdd, since the others in the pool were all 6TB, then only 6TB will be used out of the 10TB and the other 4TB are wasted .

So, i have to change all HDD to 10TB otherwise i have to live with the 6TB setup.