Add disk to raid 5 and Expand

[Jose_Alvarez]

Hi.
I have a Raid 5 with 5 hard drives and a global spare drive.
I have another 2 hard drives that I would like to add to this Raid.

I don't see the option to do it.

I see the option to add a group of disks, but with 2 disks I cannot create a raid 5 to add it.
Can I do it or should I buy another disk to create a raid 5 and add it?

[SUBHAJIT KHANBARMAN_1]

What is the MSA model that you are dealing with ?

If you are having linear array then you should be having vdisk and that can be expanded with two drives.

If you are having Virtual array then you should be having Virtual Disk Group (VDG) which you can't expand rather in order to increase space in the Pool you can create new VDG  with  few drives (better to create with same no of drives like existing VDG of same drive type) and add it to the same pool.

So in simple words linear vdisk expansion possible but Virtual Disk Group expansion not possible.

Hope this helps!
Regards
Subhajit

I am an HPE employee

If you feel this was helpful please click the KUDOS! thumb below!

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[Shawn_K]

Hello Jose,

As Subhajit has explained, if you have a linear Vdisk you can add drives to the Vdisk using the expansion utility. Be aware though that expansion can take some time. A quicker method to increase the size of your Vdisk is to follow the steps in the following advisory:  https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c03034418 

If you are using a virtual Pool there is no way to use expansion on the Pool or Disk Group. You can add a new Disk Group to the Pool so you can increase a volume size. But if you are going to do this I would suggest to use more than 2 drives so you can create a RAID5 or RAID6 (better choice( Disk Group.

Cheers,
Shawn

I work for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The comments in this post are my own and do not represent an official reply from HPE. No warranty or guarantees of any kind are expressed in my reply.

[SUBHAJIT KHANBARMAN_1]

@Jose_Alvarez 

Can you please help us to understand if the issue got resolved or not?

If issue got resolved then how?

Also request you to mark the forum as resolved if there is no more outstanding query from your end on this issue.

This will help for everyone who are all following your forum.

Hope this helps!
Regards
Subhajit

I am an HPE employee

If you feel this was helpful please click the KUDOS! thumb below!

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