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Network raid 10 to raid 5

 
cursur949
Contributor

Network raid 10 to raid 5

Currently I have a lefthand cluster that is made up of two P4300G2 units.  All of the volumes that have been created have been set to mirror (Raid 1+0) across both units.  My question is what happens, and what do i have to do when I add a third unit and I want the already created volumes across to span across all three units (raid 5)?

2 REPLIES 2
Emilo
Trusted Contributor

Re: Network raid 10 to raid 5

Unless you are using your volumes for Archiving or very little changes you do not want to go to Network RAID 5.

This is from the manual.

 

Network RAID-5 volumes are configured as thin provisioned by default. Best applications for using Network RAID-5 volumes include applications with mostly read, sequential workloads, such as file shares and archiving.

 

In any case it is a simple procedure to add the storage node to the management group then to the cluster.

As soon as you add it to the cluster the nodes will begin thier replication. You will no be able to avoid another restripe if you have to change the volumes to Nework RAID 5 as it requires 3 nodes.

 

You will not gain much going to RAID 5 unless your data is stagnet.

oikjn
Honored Contributor

Re: Network raid 10 to raid 5

if I get the point of your question, I think you are really wanting to know how to take advantage of the third node and if you need to go to raid5 to do so.  the answer is NO.  Keep it at raid10 and what will happen is that you will end up with the data being mirrored across all three nodes in such a ways that there is a copy of the data on two nodes.

 

for example, if there is data A, B, C, originially Node 1 and 2 both had data A, B, C, now with a third node, Node 1 might have data A, B, Node 2 might have Data B, C and Node 3 has data A, C.  This gives the same replication coverage, but split over three Nodes instead of 2.

 

Short answer... just add the third node and don't change your raid protection level and the system will restripe the data automatically and you will see your volume size group and performace increase automatically.