Upgrade Hard Drive in a mirrored set

[Soma Shekar]

I have Proliant 370 G1 server with 431 array controller. I have three mirrored sets - Array A,B & C. Array B has a capacity of 18.2GB each and I would like to change these two hot swap drives to 36.4GB drives.

Can anyone tell me what is the best way to do this.

[Sunil Jerath]

Hello Soma,
You can do this by changing one HDD at a time only after shutting down the server completely. Let one HDD build successfully. Make sure you are able to boot and then power it down and change the second HDD. Before you do this remember the Key phrase...BACKUP...BACKUP...BACKUP!!

Regards,

[Andrew Gladish]

After you have your new drives configured. Go into disk management as you may need to make a new logical drive with the new free space.

[Chip Caruth]

Sunil Jerath or anyone that knows...

Do you know of an HP document that outlines how to do this? Also, does this work across all HP scsi array cards? We use DL360 G3s so i want to make sure there's no gotchas.

From what i've read here and elsewhere the best way to do this is below:

0. backup server just in case
1. shutdown server
2. replace one drive
3. boot server and wait for resync (does this happen when the array card initializes?)
4. shutdown server
5. replace 2nd drive
6. boot server and wait for resync
7. Add logical volume using the new free space.


Thank you

[SAKET_5]

Hi Soma,

My advice would be to perform the following steps:
1. Upgrade the system BIOS to the latest version.
2. Upgrade the 431 array controller FW to the latest version.
3. Upgrade Proliant Support Pack (pspv.7) to the latest version 7.
4. Perform a full backup of logical drives on array B ofcourse with system state.
5. Shut down the server.
6. Pull out one 18.2GB drive from array B and replace it with the new 36GB drive.
7. Restart the server.
8. At POST you should see the message to indicate that new drive has been detected and whether you wish to rebuild the mirror ("F1" or "F2")or disable the logical drives on array B. Press the option to rebuild the mirror.
9. Once the server is booted up, fire up ACU (Array Configuration Utility) to monitor mirror rebuild.
10.Once the mirror build has completed, shut down the server.
11. Repeat steps6-10 for the second 36GB drive.
12. Fire up ACU, now you should be able to see unallocated space on array B (36-18=18GB)
13. Follow the simple instructions available within ACU to extend the size of your logical drive at the array controller level. This may take some time, according to some HP documentations I have read it might take 15 minutes per GB.I haven't witnessed this time period myself tho.
14. Now you need to extend your OS level logical volumes. If you have dynamic disks, simply extend the volume by right clicking on the volume from within Disk Management in Windows. If you have basic disks, then use Microsoft's Diskpart utility to extend your basic disk partitions.

Hope it was of help and don't forget to assign points:)

Regards,