Replace ALL disks in an MSA1000

[Katrine_1]

OS is Netware 6.5.
I have an MSA1000 which has 10 x 72GB HDDs in RAID-5. disks spread over 2 controllers, with one shared spare.

I want to replace ALL disks with 300GB HDDs.
What would be the best method to do this.?
I would prefer to keep the servers up and running if possible.

thanks
Katrine.

[Luk Vandenbussche]

I think backup and restore is the best solution.

I don't see how you would do this without any downtime.

[Jefferson Humber]

What about replacing one disk at a time with a 300Gb model, and waiting for the rebuild to complete before moving onto the next disk ?

It would leave you vunerable to a 2nd drive failure whilst rebuilding, but would allow you to keep your servers up and running.

After all 10 disks have been swapped, then the array & LUN's would need to be expanded and extended.

Just a suggestion (a long winded one at that)....

[Katrine_1]

I like the idea of simply pulling a disk at a time. (I'm in no hurry with this).
If I just pull a disk out of service, the spare kicks in? Is that right?
Can I pull out a disk, and replace with the new one pretty much immediately?

thanks.
Katrine.

[Katrine_1]

Well, I'm gradually replacing the 72GB drives with 300GBs. All seems to be going well.
Pull a disk. Wait for the spare to build. Insert a new 300 GB, wait for the new disk to build back from the spare.

The rebuild on each disk has run and completed, but although the first 4 disks show the full 300GB available space, the last 2 I've added still say 72GB, but they are 300GB drives.
Any ideas what might cause that?
(I'm using the HP web management to monitor it)
thanks
Katrine.

[Jefferson Humber · Accepted solution]

Hi Katrine,

Personally, I always connect via the serial cable into the front of the controllers if I really want to know what's going on.

Use the cable which came with the unit, and use a terminal emulation program to have a poke around with a few SHOW commands. There is HELP available, see what a SHOW TECH_SUPPORT says about your configuration.

You can always post the output here ?

Hope this helps,

Jeff

[perumal_2]

Hi

How may disk groups yuo have out of the 10 disks. You said they are in RAID5. Even you replace one of the disk in RAID5 with a higher capacity it would effectively use only the 72GB as the remaing HDD in the disk group RAIDs are of 72 GB. Yuo will end up in less space svailable though your physical disk is higher capacity.

You need plan to have the minum down time and restore from the backup, to have a bigger disk is all vailablae for your needs.

TQ
Perumal

[Katrine_1]

I knew I'd have to use the serial connection at the end to expand the array anyway,(can't do it in Netware any other way).
Hopefully that will give the full picture.

It's our live system, so I'll schedule down time to do it one evening this week.
thanks for all the help.
Katrine.

[Marek Nelec]

Katrine, are you sure, you can't expand MSA1000 using CPQONLIN.NLM? According to SmartStart 7.10 release notes "CPQONLIN.NLM has been updated to add support for the HP Smart Array 641/642 and 6402 controllers as well as the MSA1000." and the latest version of CPQONLIN.NLM is 2.84 (in version 7.70 of Proliant Support pack for Netware).

[Katrine_1]

I'll check the cpqonlin again, but in the past, I've only been able to create an array, not expand an existing one.

thanks

[Katrine_1]

Well, After taking on average, 20 hours for each disk rebuild ( 9 disks in all )the last 300 GB disk is being rebuilt as we speak.
I did have a go at extending the first array through cpqonlin.nlm, but could still only create a new logical drive, not extend the existing one.

The serial interface, and CLI does show the real size of the new disks, so as soon as rebuilding is complete, I'll get that done.
Looking at some posts about other people extending their arrays, this might take till next Christmas if I'm going from 470GB to 2000GBs !!
Thanks for all the help folks.

Katrine.

[John Kufrovich]

Katrine,
Make sure your Expand priority is set to high.

jk