Expand disc capacity on HP ProLiant DL380 G5 with RAID 5

[Skyywalkerr]

Hello friends,

I wanna ask for help with a process of expanding disc capacity.

I have HP Proliant DL380 G5 with RAID 5 and smart array P400.

Raid 5 contains 4 x 146 GB SAS 10k hotplug drives.

Logical drive capacity has : 410.1 GB, I'm able to use just 361 GB.

I need to expand this array, because my company is going out of space.

Here's a questions :

1. Is ti possible to expand usable logical drive capacity ?

1.1 If yes, which tools I need to use for that ?

2. Is it possible to do this process online ? Whole company need to use this drives all the time.

3. What is the best capacity of new drives for my server ?

I would like to add a two more drives, I read that 500 gb SAS is a greastest one which I can use on my server.

4. Is it possible to keep my drives, add new, and expand usable capacity ? Of course I cannot loose any data.

Please for help with that issue, and I'm sorry for basic questions and poor english.

Thank You

[Jan Soska · Accepted solution]

hello,

common DL380g5 has 8 2,5" SFF drive bays, you have 4 populated with 146GB drives.

so here are your options:

1) if it is a must to expand existing array:

a) make sure you have P400 BBWC Controller (battery backuped write cache) - usually it shipped with your server. Without BBWC Controller yoy can't perform online task like raid expand. If you don't have bbwc, it can be bought.

b) buy aditional 146GB disk (1 to 4 - depends on your need). Do not buy larger disk, it will waste their capacity

c) plug them into server, they will be recognized imidiatelly

d) use hp array tools for expanding array and volume (the easiest way is run HP ACU from opereating system)

e) use your os tools to expand lun (diskpart in windows)

2) If you can simply add another lun to your system:

a) byu aditional disks (1 to 4 - depends on your need)

b) plug them into server, they will be recognized imidiatelly

c) use hp array tools for creating new array and volume (the easiest way is run HP ACU from opereating system)

d) use your os tools to create and format new lun

before buying new disk, check your servers quickspecs at http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12477_na/12477_na.html for compatible part nembers.

Jan

[Skyywalkerr]

Hi

I would like to thank You for Your answer, it helps me a lot.

Is it good idea to buy 4 new SAS 500 gb drives, and replace them

on the air one by one during process of rebuilding an array ?

It's a hot plug drives, so theoretically array with RAID5 should automatically rebuild them

for a new capacity, is I'm right ?

Thanks

S

[Jan Soska]

Hello,

generally it is possible to add even bigger drives to array, replace older drives one by one. At the end, you can expand / resize whole array and then expand filesystem under your OS. I've done it before in some cases.

Of course, do not forget backup everything and expect this operation takes some time in mean of hours...

Jan

[Jan Soska]

small notice - it is very unusuall capacity 500GB sas drive - do not use near line sas if you need I/O performace

Jan