Extend Raid 5 - Proliant DL360 Gen 10 - 3 questions

[shebmeister]

Existing Hardware - 6X 1200 GB drives ( 5 drives in use + 1 spare) in Raid 5 (for last 3 years) running VMWare

Want to add 2 of the same 1200 GB drives to existing raid 5 Array

Question 1 - Can I add drives  while system is running using Intelligent provisioning from iLo (Or do I need to launch SSA from boot menu ? (this would involve shutting down production environment)

Question 2 - In HP Documentation it says: "This could take 15 min/GB" for 1 drive that's 300 hours.  Has anybody done this in the last 3 years who could share their results ?

Question 3 - anything you have learned from your experience that you could share about extending a raid array ?

[support_s]

System recommended content:

1. ProLiant DL360 Generation 3 Server Maintenance and Service Guide

2. ProLiant DL360 Generation 4p Server User Guide

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Thank you for being a HPE valuable community member.

[Suman_1978]

Hi,

Question 3 - Always take your data backup from the server before performing any storage related activity.

Question 1 - I would turn off the server, then add the drives. Before that, make sure your controller supports that configuration.
https://community.hpe.com/t5/ProLiant-Servers-ML-DL-SL/Adding-2-physical-disks-to-running-server-DL380-Gen9/td-p/7044705

Question 2 - "This could take 15 min/GB" for 1 drive that's 300 hours. Documentation says so, but personally I have not tried this, may be some other community members can share their experience.

Thank You!
I work with HPE but opinions expressed here are mine.
Recent Support Video Releases

[Cali]

Hi,

sorry, you give no Information about the Raid Controller.
Online Drive extension needs a Battery protected write Cache.

If you have HPE ESX Image Installed, there should be Controller CLI Installed.

If not, you can install like this: esxcli software vib install -v=/vmfs/volumes/datastore/StorCliMN/vmware-esx-StorCli-1.01.04.vib

For SR Controller use: ssacli ctrl all show

For MR Controller use: storecli show all

If you know your Controller you can search for the commands.

Cali

[Sunehaka]

I'm just about to do an expansion of a raid 6 adding 2 more disk. And I have the same questions, can I run the SSA from Windows or do I need to reboot and start Intelligent Provisioning?
I found a video recorded by a HPE guy doing this but through the boot menu (F10), no information if this was a must.
I will probably be able to answer question 2 and 3 after I'm done, but since this was 1 year ago I guess you have found out already

[Sunehaka]

After some investigation I found that the process can be launched from the following alternatives:

a) The F10 boot menu

b) The SSA command line interface

c) The normal SSA GUI application