Adding a drive to a MSA 50

[rogerp_1]

Hi all,

Looking for some advice if possible.

We have a the below kit :

ML 350 G3
Smart Array 642 1 with 1 Logical Drive for Local C drive using Raid 1 for BOOT OS.

Smart Array 642 2 with 1 Logical Drive for DATA, D drive using raid 5 connected to the MSA 50.

The MSA has 4 x 250gb Sata disks and is now running low on disk space, we would like to add an additionl drive to it.

My steps are :

Backup all data (just in case)

Power Down Server and push new drive in.
Boot up server.

Use ACU and expand logical Drive.

Then use disk Part to expand the Window Disk to see the rest of the disk space.

My questions :

1st, is the above correct ?

2nd, Does anyone know how long the Explanding Logical drive using ACU should take, not asking exactly, should it be minuets or hours ?
I've heard this can take days ?

3rd, is the above in the correct steps or have i missed anything.

Unfortunatly i've only got limited downtime so i need to know before i start to warn the client.

Thanks

[TTr]

First the 642 must be capable of the online array and LUN expansion. It is not clearly mentioned for the 642 but for all other SA controllers, the BBWC must be installed to allow you to do online expansions.

The 642 and the MSA50 are (parallel) SCSI based so those 250GB disks are SCSI not SATA.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12069_na/12069_na.HTML

I don't think you need to power down the server but that's fine too.

Use the ACU to expand the array (restriping the existing LUN from 4 disks to five) and when that is done you expand the LUN (two steps). And then you do the diskpart as you mentioned.

The expansion will take 1.5 - 2 days. You need to restripe ~750GB of LUN space. (rough estimate is 15 min per GB)

[TTr]

That MSA50 is probably an MSA30.

[rogerp_1]

Sorry my mistake..

its a MSA 20...

[TTr]

In this case you are correct. They are SATA drives.

The 642 is U320 SCSI

The MSA20 has U320 SCSI interface (connecting to the 642) but it uses SATA drives internally.