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Proliant ML350 G3 Out of Disk Space

 
vruggiero
New Member

Proliant ML350 G3 Out of Disk Space

Hi, I have a Proliant ML350 G3 server with all 6 SCSI disks bay occupied by SCSI HDD of 146 Gigs. 2 are set for RAID 1 for the OS and the other 4 RAID 5 for the data. I have MS Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise on it and I am gradually running out of space. There was 410 Gigs of space, a year later from the initial setup it's left to 173 gigs. My question is, how can I increase the size of the space by still keeping the server on or impact users minimally with some down time?

Can I remove one of the 146 Gigs Drive and replace it with a 300 Gigs, one regenerated do the same for the others on the Raid 5?

What's the best way in your opinion?

Thanks in advance for all your help.

Vince
5 REPLIES 5
Igor Karasik
Honored Contributor

Re: Proliant ML350 G3 Out of Disk Space

Vince,

>>Can I remove one of the 146 Gigs Drive and replace it with a 300 Gigs, one regenerated do the same for the others on the Raid 5?

Yes, you can !
After you replace last fourth drive you need to use diskpart utility to extend you data volume
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325590/en-us
It is good idea to update SmartArray firmware and Proliant support pack to last versions before you start.

The second option:
Buy ML3xx Two Bay Hot Plug SCSI Drive Cage and you can install two additional 140 Gb drives and extend your RAID-5.

IMHO, first option is preferable.
Igor Karasik
Honored Contributor

Re: Proliant ML350 G3 Out of Disk Space

Vince,
I want to add several words about Exchange space:
>>There was 410 Gigs of space, a year later from the initial setup it's left to 173 gigs

IMHO, it is NOT normal situation!

Do you use mailbox limits?
Do you use some type of Exchange archiving software ? (for example
ZANTAZ or IXOS ?)

We have 5 Exchange 2003 servers in our organization and information store (IS) of the largest server is about 30 Gb only (300+ users on this server and we use this IS already 7 years, from Exchange 5.5) We use strict mailbox limits and message limits and we think about ZANTAZ solution implementation.


vruggiero
New Member

Re: Proliant ML350 G3 Out of Disk Space

Igor, thanks for your reply. We do use mailboxes limitations of 2 Gigs for each user. We have 500+ users and they are all set to be exchange clients. We use RPC over HTTP and I only have one exchange server. There is another but that's the front end. I have a full backup that is set to flush the logs and circular logging is not turned on.
vruggiero
New Member

Re: Proliant ML350 G3 Out of Disk Space

Igor, thanks again and sorry for the short answer before. As you see I only have one exchange server which holds the mailboxes of 500+ employees and they are set to be maximum of 2 Gigs each. Fortunate enough not all of them are using to the limit and the archiving method we use is the Auto-archive in MS Outlook. This way the emails are locally as a PST file and out of inbox. So is it wise to add extra storage to the existing Hardware and let the storgae file grow even bigger or add another exchange server to distribute the mailboxes among them?
Igor Karasik
Honored Contributor

Re: Proliant ML350 G3 Out of Disk Space

>>So is it wise to add extra storage to the existing Hardware and let the storgae file grow even bigger or add another exchange server to distribute the mailboxes among them?

I think there is no simple answer here.
You need to check general Exchange server performance (CPU, memory,...), concurrent users number, SMTP throughput, ....
You can check it with some types of exchange monitoring software (we use Microsoft MOM for example)

If you don't have performance problems with exchange you can use even 6 * 300 Gb drives in RAID-5 (by using ML3xx Two Bay Hot Plug SCSI Drive Cage) - 1500 Gb disk space.
The only problem you may have is backup time/disaster recovery time.
Shortly, I think you do not need to add another exchange server to distribute the mailboxes only because disk space, but probably you will need to do it because general exchange performance issues.