Replace disks with bigger ones

[Jan Eertink]

Hello,
We have a SQL W2K3 DL360 server with 4 disks SAS 74GB 15K in RAID1+0 and 2 disks 148GB SAS 10K in RAID1.
Now we have a storage problem on the first 4 disks, and like to replace them with 4 disks 148GB 15K SAS.
My first thought was to clone the disks and then replace them. But I don't know where to start first. Do I need to reconfigure the raid controller? Is cloning the best way? or are there other options to? (its a critical server for our organisation, so I want to do it right the first time :-) )

Many thanks in advance!

Best regards,

Jan Eertink

P.S. This thread has been moevd from Disk to ProLiant Servers (ML,DL,SL). - Hp forum moderator

[Greybeard]

You don't say what the 'storage problem' is. It may be possible to clone and then extend/migrate but if the array has a fault it is probably better to back up the data then restore to the new volume. it's only 150GB after all. ;)

[Jan Eertink]

Thanks for your reply

We have a database and we get a database next to the database with management info. Our supplier calls it a data ware house with logging capacities. Due to this the database will double in size.

If I clone the disks, the raid controller knows nothing about this (I guess), I hope the raid config still works?

If I rebuild the disks by replacing them one by one, the partition size will be the same, so I'll have to increase the size and change the raid controllers config

My fear is that the raid config, is gone and the data is lost. I have a backup of course, but I would like to do this as simple and as quick as possible.

[Greybeard]

Hi, don't confuse LUNs with raidsets. If the disks are swapped one at a time then after the last disk rebuilds the LUNs should be the same but the Controller will see unused space, the LUN can then be extended to use this space but windows may be unable to cope with the dynamic size change, I have used several proliant smart array controllers to expand volumes but the limiting factor is usually the O/S. If you have a backup then creating a new array and restoring it will probably be quicker as four array rebuilds plus a lengthy migration to extend into the unused space will almost certainly take longer.

[Jan Eertink]

This is how we did it:

We replaced the drives one by one so it rebuilds. After the fourth drive we went to the hp raid controller gui and extended the drive, after that the os (in this case w2k3) saw the remaining space, after that we did a diskpart extend command. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325590

thanks for the help.

p.s. Don't forget to backup first ;-)