EVA5000 - adding 28 disks - Best Practice?

[KarstenPE]

Hello !

I would like to know the best practice for adding 28 new disks (i.e. two fully occupied shelfes) in an EVA5000 where there are two diskgroups to be enlarged. Can I add more than 3 disks simultanously to a diskgroup? And how long does it take, approximately?

Thanks,
Karsten

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi Karsten,

I'm not sure on a best practice, but it is certainly possible to add more than 3 disks simultaneously.

You'll probably find that you are better off adding all of the disks that you need to each disk group in one go. That should make the RSS groups get organised better.

How long it will take is anyone's guess !
There are lots of different factors - so it's difficult to predict accurately.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

[KarstenPE]

Thanks Rob!

Can I add multiple disks to a diskgroup with Command View or do I have to use the CLI for this purpose?

Regards,
Karsten

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi,

Yes you can do this through Command View.
If you click on the Disk Group name you should see the Add Disks button towards the top of the right hand pane...

Cheers,

Rob

[Ivan Ferreira]

I would do this to add the new disks:

- Add the 28 disks to the storage
- Check that the latest firmware is applied to disks before groupping them
- Wait 24 hours before groupping the disks to let them "warm up" (let them sping for a while), this told me one HP engineer once.
- Consider groupping multiple disks. This will avoid multiple leveling process.

[Yogeeraj_1]

hi Karsten,

Also verify that both the "old" and "new" disks are updated to the latest firmware level. Mixing them together would not be a good idea.


good luck!

kind regards
yogeeraj

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi,

Another thing which it is advisable to do, is to exercise the disks before adding them to an existing disk group. I learnt this one from experience when I added a load of second user disks to an existing group, and two failed within quick succession... :-(

You could do this by creating a new disk group with the 28 new disks and then creating some test Vdisks within that group...

Cheers,

Rob

[Mark...]

Hi,
In your note you did not say how many shelves / disks that you have or what speed capacity you have + wish to add in.
When adding in extra disks the disks should be vertically aligned across all of the shelves
You should try to virtically align disk speeds and capacities as much as possible
You are not able to mix on-line with near-online [fata] disks in a DG
When adding new drives, wait 2 mins between each new insertion [gives EVA time to sort out each drive in between all it's other work]
If you are adding in different, larger capacity drives then you should consider your sparing capacity/level - if you are using this facility, per DG
I'm sure there are a couple of others which are not springing to mind at the moment but -
All HP best practices...
Mark..

[KarstenPE]

Thanks to you all!

My main question was, maybe al little bit unclear written, how do I add multiple disks (14 for example) from two new enclosures to an existing diskgroup in one step? Is it possible, by the way?

The EVA hast now 8 shelfes built in, all fully populated, only FC disks, and the only two existing DGs aligned vertically. Firmware on all disks the same.

Regards,
Karsten

[Uwe Zessin]

Select the "Disk Group properties" page of the desired disk group and then press [Add disks].

[Mark...]

Hi,
As above, but the default = 1 disk, just make it 14 for the DG you wish to add them to. Also, Add them all in in one go.
Mark...

[Sakthi Murugan]

hi,

add one disk to drive enclo then waite until drive activity LED to stop then continue with same steps for all diaks

[Uwe Zessin]

No, you can add multiple disks at once.

Also, with host I/O going on, the disks will show activity all the time - you do need to check within Command View EVA whether the addition and leveling has completed.

[KarstenPE]

Hello NG,
Some days ago I added these 28 disks to 2 diskgroups. Everything was fine, but the maximum number of disks CommandView allowed me to add simultaneously was 14 in first place, so I added 10 disks to DG2 and then, surprise, surprise I was able to add the remaining 18 disks in oone step to DG1, as planned.

Thanks to all.
Karsten

[Tim Nelson]

Only a follow up note as I just recently did the same and called HP first to see what their recommendation was.

HP recommended adding 8 at a time to the disk group. It took about 4-6 hours each releveling to finish.

From the reading above it does not seem to matter much but figured I would add the experience.