adding disk to smart array 5i

[Leslie Martin]

Yes, it will add another logical drive but it should still be part of your original array. What you should end up with is 1 Array divided into 2 logical drives. netware will see the additional logical drive as free space. It's then just a matter of partitioning it under Netware and assigning the new space to your volume(s)

[Matt Burgess]

cpqonlin supports expansion (adding space) but not extension (logical drives) or migration (changing RAID levels). You will need to boot from SmartStart to do this.

For the guys will DL380s, the reason it takes so long is that you don't have a write cache on the controller. It is much quciker with a write cache.

If possible.

1. Shut down
2. Install a slotted array controller with write cache and connect it to the disks. The config is stored on the disks, not the controller, so this is fully supported.
3. boot to SmartStart and run your expansion/migration/extension process.
4. shutdown and restore the original cabling config.

[TerenceB]

Hi,
I think 10 minutes per GB mentioned above is a rather optimistic estimation. It took 35 hours to add an 18.2gb disk on one of our Compaq ML370 servers. So that's like about 500 Mb per hour. But everything went fine and the server was in use ok during the array expansion. Novell Netware 6.5 with SP6.