Array Expansion Delay..

[Sukesh_1]

Hi,
On Thursday (8th Jan) i had tried to expand an array of 3x146Gb Hd (in Raid 5) to include an additional 1x146Gb and its still expanding as of today 11th Jan. There is a status message icon on this array (In ACU) and it shows the following messages...

"Msg1: The current array controller is performing capacity expansion, extension, or migration on array A.
Additional expansions, extensions, and migrations are not allowed on this controller until this process is complete. Also, configuration changes to any other array that is waiting for expansion or rebuild are not possible until this process completes. If unused space exists, additional logical drives can be created. Otherwise, most configuration changes are not allowed until this process is complete."

"Msg2: Background parity initialization is currently queued or in progress on logical drive 1 ( RAID 5 in array A). If background parity initialization is queued, it will start when I/O is performed on the drive. When background parity initialization completes, the performance of the logical drive will improve."

"Msg3: Background parity initialization is currently queued or in progress on logical drive 2 ( RAID 5 in array A). If background parity initialization is queued, it will start when I/O is performed on the drive. When background parity initialization completes, the performance of the logical drive will improve."

I use smart array controller 642 and my server is a ML 370 G4 (Intel Xeon 3.4Ghz with 3Gb RAM). In the ACU the second logical drive, i tried creating, shows a paused sign on it. In the Disk Management utility it shows the new logical disk as "Not Initialized".

Can anyone tell me if this is normal and how many days more do i have to wait for the expansion to get over?

regrds
Sk

[KarloChacon]

h

yes EXPAND process takes some time
also you can change the EXPAND priority for controller check controller settings o similar
you can set it to high

bye

[Rancher]

We had the same issue with some of our ML370 G5 servers. Do you have a PSP installed? HP support told us that it was an issue with these servers and PSP 8.0. After we reverted to version 7.91, the problem went away.

[Chris Rosan2]

I added 3x 72G Drives to my MSA1500 CS (uses SA6402 controller) a couple of years ago and it took 5 days to rebuild the array. During that time all the systems connected to it ran slow, and by backup went from 8 hours to 32 hours to run.

Let's just say i'm never doing that again.

I did already have 7 disks, but i believe it's related to how much space you have, as it has to "move" data from the other disks to the new one's the share it "evenly", rebuild parity etc.

The PSP issue could also be a problem. There may be a newer one than 8.0 now as well which may have resolved the problem.

How long has it been running

[KarloChacon]

PSP has nothing to do with that

since you can even do expand and extend procedure with no OS at all

[Chris Rosan2]

It could have an impact though if there's a bug with the PSP that's not reporting the expand has finished.

I suggest waiting a few days before you do anything with the PSP, especially if your server has a lot of I/O (as this will slow the expand down)

[Sukesh_1]

Hi all,
Thnx for all your replies. Karlo, I did read on some posts that one can set the expand priority to a higher level. Unfortunately, i only saw that after the expansion process was underway. So i wasn't sure whether it would do any good by increasing the priority in between the process. Is there any downside of increasing the priority? I mean will there be any decrease in server performance (for other tasks) when the priority is high or medium?

By PSP i guess you mean the proliant smartstart pack? If so, then the version that i have on this server is 7.40.

Anyways, the process got over the very next day of my logging a thread on here. Got a scare but alls well now...

Thank you again all of you...
sk