Extendending an existing Array

[Florian Rhomberg]

Hi!
We are using an HP Pro Liant ML370 G4 with Smart Array Controller 641.

At the moment we have two logical devices. One RAID5 logical device with four 72 GB hard disks and one RAID1 logical device with two 143 GB hard disks.

Does somebody know if it is possible to change the 72 GB devices by 300 GB devices during the system is running and without installing a new system.

I have heart that some controllers support to create a new logical devices on hard disks where another logical devices is already exisiting. Is this also true for the 641 controller.

The problem is that we have to extend the exisiting space with a minimum of costs.

Thank you for your help,
Florian

[Rajashekar Chintakunta · Accepted solution]

Hi Florian,

Turn off the server, remove one of the 72gb Hdd and install 300gb in that slot and restart, it would rebuild that disk. once rebuilding is done successfully again shutdown the server remove the second 72gb Hdd and swap with 300gb hdd and repeat the procedure for the last disk also.

Once the entire procedure is done, you will have all 300gb Hdds in this unit and you could extend the logical drive. And you could use the 72gb hdds in a different server without losing any information on 72gb hdds.

Regards,
Raj.

[sandeep_raman]

Hello Florian,

Only if the RAID5 logical device with four 72 GB hard disks is a data volume then you can extend.

https://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1065834

SRH

[Florian Rhomberg]

Thank you for your quick response. The new information was very helpful to me. But I have a question to the expansion.

I have two partitions on this RAID5 Array. One system partition with Windows 2003 and one for data. I understand that it is not possible to extend the system partition but generally spoken is it possible to extend and RAID5 array where a system is installed on one partition.

Theoratically the OS sees an array as an harddik with one or more partitions. After the change normally the "old" two partitons should be present as before and the "new space" is shown as unused harddik space. On this unused space it should be possible to create a new partition. Is this correct?

Thanks,
Florian

[sandeep_raman]

Well,is it logical volume A for the OS and logical volume B for data?

SRH

[Florian Rhomberg]

I want to say thank you to all of you who have helped me. I did it last week and erverything is fine. I just had to create a new locgical volume and everyhthing is fine. Thank you
Florian