ML350 G6 Raid 5 to Raid 10 migration

[Dennis Severt]

Hi,

We had 3 drives in a raid-5 configuration.
Because of the bad performance we decided to upgrade to raid-10.
So we purchased 3 extra HP 300gb. sas 10k 2.5" hdd's and I added them with the ACU tool to the already existing array.
So far so good.

At that point I saw I could migrate to Raid-10, but I thought it was better to first add the new free space to the volume.
So after that was done also, the migration to raid10 option was gone.

-Unfortunately I couldn't find a way to delete the 3 new disks and try it again
-And there's enough free space to actual do the migration, so I'm not sure why the option is gone.

Is there a way to still do this on a live server?
I know I can create an image of the server and totally re-do the raid configuration, but this is a live environment that I don't want to take offline.

Any idea's?

Thanks!
Dennis

[TVVJ]

In the given situation, one way out will be to shrink the volume through Array Configuration Utility (ACU), by using Smart Array Advanced Pack (SAAP). This enables shrinking the volume thus enabling to remove the drives. If SAAP license is installed, it would be recommended to backup data, then shrink the volume, and once completed, remove one drive at a time and allow for rebuild to complete as the RAID level is 5 and tolerates a single disk failure. Once the disks are released, install them again and then migrate RAID.

To use SAAP to shrink the volume, steps found in HP Guided Troubleshooting may be referred to. Click the following link to reach HP ProLiant ML350 G6 Server’s guide:

          http://h20584.www2.hp.com/hpgt/guides/select?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=3884315&lang=en&cc=us

Navigate through the following options to reach the steps:

Installation, Setup and Configuration > Smart Array Advance Pack (SAAP) > Configuring the SAAP Features > Advanced Capacity Expansion > Shrinking an array

One another way would be to power down the server and shrink the volume offline and then remove one disk at a time and allow for server re-build for each drive removal and then insert them again to migrate the RAID level.

Regards,

Vijayasarathy

[Dennis Severt]

Hmm, that still seems like a lot of work, any alternatives?

[Harlock]

Sounds like the drives were added to the current RAID 5 (did you performed the expand process?) and that explains why the option for migration is not there any more. Besides the previous option listed above performing  a backing up of the data, recreating the array from scratch and restoring the data will be the other option.