Expand RAID 5 with HP Smart Array P440ar Controller

[SRL2]

We have a ProLiant DL360 Gen9 with a Smart Array P440ar Controller containing 4 x 600GB 12G SAS 15K drives configured in to 1 logical drive using RAID 5. I have added a 5th drive of identical type the the first 4 and wish to use it to expand the size of the current RAID array. But I'm unable to find a way to do this using the HP Smart Storage Administrator.

Can you tell me if this is possible, and if so how it should be done.

Thanks.

[Torsten.]

Run SSA, select the array (see sample picture) and click manage data drives, then you can add an available disk

[SRL2]

Torsten, thanks for the info but this is how I assumed it would be done. But when I ckick on 'Manage Data Drives' I only get the option to 'Move Drive(s)'. Do you know why this might be?

Thanks, Stefan

[RoscoT]

Hello Stefan,

Did you end up solving this one. I've got the same problem.

Kind regards,

Ross

[SRL2]

Hi Ross,

No, not yet. The new drive is currently just added as a spare. It's going to have to be looked at again soon as we need the space!

Regards,

Stefan

[BlythA]

Hello, 

I ran into this issue few days ago. I saw this post and i was having the same issue. Unable to see that option when i plugged in 2 identical drives to expand my 4 drives array in RAID 5. I beleive it was resovled by erasing the drive first. Keep in mind that the proccess for erasing 2*200GB SSD took 24hours. Once the Erase is completed, you will be able to this option "Enable Erase Drive" > under the unassigned drive sub-category. The Manage Drive Option then becomes available under the logical controlled sub-category. 

Fun Fact - Download the SmartStorage Tool rather than taking the server offline and doing it through the Intelligent Provisioning ( If Server in Producation ). then you can submit the erase operation and reboot again to bring your Production Server back online and monitor the proccess through the SmartStorage Tool installed on your server OS. 

There isnt really any documentations for this on uncle google - most of it are for the P4410, 20. 

Hope this helps! Good Luck 

P.S Ensure that you have a recent system state/image backup! Just Incase!

[Doug Yoder]

Ever find a solution? I'm trying ot add a sixth drive to a five drive RAID5, but the only option I get is to move not expand.

[Doug Yoder]

Problem solved thanks to Pawan Srivastava in HPE support. My physical server OS was VMWare so after verifying the hardware in iLO from the cli on the VMWare host he used these commands.

To add physical disk six he issued this command
/opt/hp/hpssacli/bin/hpssacli ctrl slot=0 array A add drives=2I:1:6 (twoi[cap]:one:six)

To monitor progress of Array Expansion
/opt/hp/hpssacli/bin/hpssacli ctrl slot=0 show config

Once array expansion completed, to further extend logical drive with added space, run below command.
/opt/hp/hpssacli/bin/hpssacli ctrl slot=0 ld 1 modify size=max

Run below command again and verify unused space is 0MB for Array and logical drive has good status.
/opt/hp/hpssacli/bin/hpssacli ctrl slot=0 show config

Further re-scan storage at OS level and increase storage space in OS configuration.

KUDOS go to Pawan Srivastava in HPE support.

[MattF58Servers]

P440AR,

EXACT same problem.

Need to add 2x drives. Physically inserted drives. The drives show up under "unassigned drives" - make/model/specs are correct.

Only "move drives" appears under Manage data drives.

OS is Windows 2012R2.

[MattF58Servers]

I was having the EXACT same problem with p440ar on 380G9.

I upgraded the Smart Storage Administrator to 3.10.3.0 (July 2017) today and the "expand array" option is magically there now.

http://h20564.www2.hpe.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?swItemId=MTX_bd0f127e68d246538db6b63864

SSA was 2.2...