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VSA Node replacement

 
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seant
Occasional Contributor

VSA Node replacement

I am in the process of replacing two nodes in a cluster with two new hosts.

 

I'm to a point where I have 4 nodes in the cluster and I'm ready to remove the two old nodes. The catch is that we've added extra drives to the new VSAs during this time as well. So I have two new nodes with 2 active and 2 uninitialized disks each.

 

My question is, would it be better to remove the two old nodes first, against best policy which states it's best to have no warnings active during the removal, or would it be better to activate the disks first, which I assume would cause a restripe across all four nodes and then remove the old nodes from the cluster. That seems like it would take a much longer time.

 

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks.

 

Sean

4 REPLIES 4
oikjn
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: VSA Node replacement

I would remove the "new"  VSAs from the cluster and fix their disk situation first.  Then, instead of adding them back in to create a 4-node cluster as you did, you should use the "exchange node" function in CMC to swap the new and old nodes in a single restripe.  Its much more efficient when you are planning on replacing a node in a cluster.

seant
Occasional Contributor

Re: VSA Node replacement

Thanks for the advice!

 

What's the difference between exchanging a storage system and swapping one? If I'm changing out both nodes in a cluster, would swapping be a better method?

seant
Occasional Contributor

Re: VSA Node replacement

Nevermind, I found the answer in the white paper linked below. Appreciate all of the help. Thanks!

 

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetPDF.aspx/4AA4-0304ENW.pdf

oikjn
Honored Contributor

Re: VSA Node replacement

yup.

 

also, not to sound like an a$$, but the help section in CMC is actually pretty good.  Use that and it answers a lot of questions if you are unsure of how something works or our it is supposed to be setup.