Expanding existing Lun On EVA4000 concerns

[Larry Betson]

Hello:

I need to expand a LUN on an EVA4000. The server attached is an HP Blade 35P with Windows 2003 and SQL running.

My question is this. Can I expand the LUN on the fly without service interruption? I assume I need to shutdown any SQL services writing data to the drive?

I am new to HP storage and I have very little good documentation on doing this procedure. Is there any detailed step by step documentation on doing this? Do I need to run diskpart as part of this procedure as well after I expand the LUN?

After I expand the LUN do I merely need to rescan the drives to see the new disk size?

Any help would be deeply appreciated.

[Steven Clementi]

Larry:

You can expand a Virtual Disk on the EVA easily while the server is online. Yes, you will have to, or at least you should, bounce SQL (or stop the services during the final stage of the expansion) to send any/all i/o remaining in buffers/memory/etc to disk.

Step 1: Expand the Vdisk. No service stoppage necessary.
Step 2: Extend the partition on the Windows System. Stop services here. The task takes only moments to complete.

To extend the partition, you can't just do a "rescan". You have to use a utility like diskpart to actuall extend the partition. HP has produced Storage Volume Growth for this purpose. It is part of HP's end to end solution for Storage and Growth. See here...

" http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storage/software/svg/index.html "

You can complete the task with diskpart, a free Microsoft Utility, or you can use the support SVG from HP. I have used diskpart without any issues in the past, though I know a few that have had issues.

Diskpart info here...

" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325590/en-us "

SVG is about 500 dollars, depending on the placde you buy it from., or at least it was about 6 months ago.


Steven