Merge new hard drives in ML370 with raid5

[amr_6]

I have a Prolaint server ML370 G2 with smart array controller RAID5 had in it 4 hard drives 16.8 and I want to upgrade the capacity in this server so I want to plug in 2 new hard drives 36.8GB instead of 2 drives 16.8GB and this server hold the Exchange server and the DC so Iâ m afraid to lose any Data so what exactly should I do to perform this operation without losing any of my Data

[Uwe Zessin]

amr,

it sounds like you want to replace just 2 of your 4 disks drives that are part of the same disk array, so that the final configuration is: 2 disk drives with 18.2 GBytes and 2 disk drives with 36.4 GBytes in the same disk array.

Unfortunately you will not gain any additional space by replacing just two disk drives. The total capacity of a disk array is determined by the smallest disk. You will have to replace all 4 disk drives with bigger ones.

[amr_6]

So you mean i have to replace the whole 4 hard drives with the new ones and reinstall the whole system from zero point again ... u know this will mean that i have to instal the Dc and exchange server for my organization again .. its very toguh thing to do... so what about adding new hard drives to the array without replacing i think i still had a place for 2 extra hard drives..

[Uwe Zessin]

Well, some controllers allow you to replace the disks online with higher capacity ones, but I don't know if your one falls under this category.

So you disable your spare disk. Then you rip out the first low-capacity disk and replace it with a new one. The controller will do the usual RAID-rebuild. When it is ready and only then you can repeat this with the next disk and so on. Understand that during the whole process (and it will take quite some time) your data is not RAID-protected! If another disk fails or you pull the next disk too early your data is gone.

Make sure you have a good backup.

After that you have free space at the end of the disk array. You can use this to create another logical disk or expand your current one. Of course, this will not resize your current partition(s).

[Olivier_20]

Depend if you realy want to have only 4 drive in the server but, personaly i would use the 6 hd.
1- go in acu
2- make sure you see your two new drive
3- expand your array to include these 2 new drive
4- creat a new logical drive with them.
5- make new partition with the new space.

I mean if you want to do a raid 5 dont think about mixing the size of HD... you cant make a raid 5 with 18gig and 36 gig in the same raid set.

hopefully that will help.

[Uwe Zessin]

I am pretty sure you can do that with a SmartArray Controller - it will just not use the remaining 18 GBytes of the 36 GBytes disk drives.

[amr_6]

So after reviewing lots of articles regarding this case I think the best way to do it through 2 solutions I should pick up one of them the 1st one is to just the new hard drives in the empty slots of the server and go to the acu and add the new hard drives to the raid and in this case I will lose some space because the raid will go to the lowest space in the hard drives which is 16.8 GB.

The 2nd one is to insert the 2 hard drives 36.8GB and create a new raid1 using the acu and make mirroring between these 2 hard drives and then move the data files to this hard drives and free more space for the drive M: (email) and this will give a reasonable space that fit my business needs.

So this I really need assist in which solution should I take.

Thanks

[Olivier_20]

if you swap a 18.2, fit a 36gig. it will rebuild but only use 18.2gig so for your problem its useless cause you only have 2 36gig. if you want to just add your 2 new HD with a new logical drive here are the step:
1- insert the 2 new drive in server
2-update firmware of all HD and array controler( old firmware of old server might confilct with the new one)
3- boot with SS cd, i would use a version 6 or higher.
4- acess the ACU( array configuration utility)
5- you should see your 2 new drive that are ot included in the array yet, just under the array controler icon.
6- high lite your array wich contain your other drive.
7- click the button EXPAND.
8- choose your 2 drive that you just added.
9- now you got some not allocated space on the array
10- choose this space and creat logical drive with it, of course you can set in mirror if you want to be safe, or buy an other one and make raid5( depend on how critical is the data )
11- creat a partition with that space and you are mostly done.


Again this is just my idea, i also though about the solution of the other person, one sounded realy good but not sure if it would work and you would need 2 other drire: swap your 18gig one at the time and make them rebuild. once you got 4*36 gig you should be able to use your full space buy extending the logical drive, then you can also put back your 4 drive 18.2gig and have MUCH more place than you had, but id have to confirm of it would be working im not 100% sure.

[amr_6]

i think your opinion sounds fine to me but also i wanna know something else the recent hard drives (4*18.6) the RPM for them is 10K and the new ones is 15K is this make effect on the raid performance or maybe make a conflict in adding the new 2 drives to the recent array .. or it should work fine and make no difference .. this is exactly what Iâ m asking about ..

regarding the solution that u mentioned by adding 4 hard drives 4*36GB i already have a new 4 hard drives 4*36GB still in their boxes but the idea that i had an up and running system now which i dont want to break it and break the riad to create a new one and this system had its own domain and DNS and Exchange and many many configuration since 2 years ago .. so what i wanna do is to update my system with least risk and least administration effort ...
also the idea of breaking the recent raid and then reinstall every thing from scratch again and then restore i donâ t think that the restore operation will be that helpful .. sure some ghost problems will appear .. And i'm using a veritass backup exec for windows se

[Olivier_20]

lets say you got a raid 5, 2 drive are 10k and 2 drive are 15k, all of them will run at 10k, there will be no conflict just run at lower hd speed.

If that was your question