Netserver Lh6000 RAID 5 Upgrade

[Cristiano_7]

I have an Lh6000 with 4 logical drives (LD's) and Integrated Netraid Controller with 2 Channel.
Description:

LD0 - 2x18Gb Raid1 (Operating System/SQL)

LD1 - 2x18Gb Raid1 (Swap File)

LD2 - 5x18Gb Raid5 (databases)

LD3 2x18Gb Raid1 (unused).

I need to delete LD3 and Upgrade LD2 to 5x36Gb Raid5. How can I do that without damage the other LD's and keep the OS intact (Netraid Assistant or Netraid Config (Boot-up CTRL-M)?

[Greg Carlson · Accepted solution]

Cristiano,

Are you running 2000? If so, install the latest version of NetRaid assistant. Then you highlight the LD3 under logical view and delete the array. next step would then be to add capacity to LD 2. You show in your config you are already at Raid 5 so adding two more hdds from LD 3 into LD 2 will not affect your raid level. You can download the netraid assistant here if you don't already have it installed.

http://productfinder.support.hp.com/tps/ProductFinder?h_lang=en&h_tool=software&h_query=netraid

One more note--> Adding capacity or changing RAID levels results in a rebuild of the stripe so make sure you are happy with your backup before starting incase the rebuild fails.

HTH,
Greg

[Cristiano_7]

Hi Greg,

I'm using Windows NT4 Enterprise. I don't want use the disk drives from LD2 and LD3, I have 5 new 36 Gb Hd's to create a new LD2 Raid5.

Thank You.

[kris rombauts]

Hi Cristiano,

Greg was correct but to perform what you want to do ,you will also have the delete LD2 after you initialy deleted LD3 (removing LD's only works from highest to lowest).

B.02.00 Netraid Assistant also works on NT4 EE.

Their is a possibility to migrate the 5*18 Gbyte disks into 5*36 Gbyte disks without destroying LD2 but it needs some additional actions on the Netraid and OS level then, this is however not a clean method.
It's best to stop the SQL serices/backup LD2/ delete it/physically remove the 5*18 disks/ recreate a new LD2 with 5*36 Gbyte disks and restore databases.


LD0 and LD1 will stay alive at all time, you don't even have to reboot the server.

HTH

Kris

[Cristiano_7]

Hi Kris,

And what about the partitions on NT4, when I delete the LD3 and LD2 on Netraid Assistant, I need to delete the partitions on Disk Administrator or they disapear? and then when I create a new LD2 (5x36 GB)?

Thank's

[Terri Harris]

Remember that NT knows nothing about the hardware RAID itself. NT sees each logical drive as a single physical drive. So the questions become:

1. What happens in NT (specifically Disk Administrator) if a hard drive is removed?

2. What happens in NT when a new hard drive is added?

Note: If LD3 is "unused", does that mean this available disk space was never allocated in NT? If so, deleting LD3 should have no affect by itself.

I would check the Microsoft web site for documents related to NT Disk Administrator, and what happens when drives are added & removed.

[kris rombauts]

Hi Cristiano,

i did not mentioned this but before you delete the logical drive via the Netraid Assistant utility it's best to delete the partition(s) via disk administrator on NT4 (or disk mgmt in W2K) otherwise you get those pop up errors that their was an error writing to the disk etc etc.

So add one step in between the few steps i listed you in the previous response and first delete the partition(s) on those disks that correspond with the logical drives you plan to delete.

Then once the new logical drive 5*36 Gbyte is ready, you can recreate partitions again and assign drive letters. If the drive letter you need to assign is not selectable in the drop list of drive letters in disk administrator at that time you might need to reboot the server. I am not sure anymore if NT4 can handle this (delete drive letter and recreate the same letter again without reboot in between) it's been to long ago i did this.


Kris