Ok trying to learn but instructions require base understanding.

[Donny Lairson]

root@box1 [~]# hpacucli ctrl slot=0 show

Smart Array 6i in Slot 0 (Embedded)
Bus Interface: PCI
Slot: 0
Cache Serial Number: P75B20C9SRZ5PT
RAID 6 (ADG) Status: Disabled
Controller Status: OK
Chassis Slot:
Hardware Revision: Rev B
Firmware Version: 2.80
Rebuild Priority: Low
Expand Priority: Low
Surface Scan Delay: 15 secs
Post Prompt Timeout: 0 secs
Cache Board Present: True
Cache Status: OK
Accelerator Ratio: 75% Read / 25% Write
Total Cache Size: 192 MB
No-Battery Write Cache: Disabled
Cache Backup Power Source: Batteries
Battery/Capacitor Count: 1
Battery/Capacitor Status: OK
SATA NCQ Supported: False


I have 4 Drives in a Raid 1+0 and have added two more drives.

So I want to make it one 6 drive raid 10. Without losing any data of course.

So I read and I run this command.

root@box1 [~]# hpacucli ctrl slot=0 ld 1 add drives=allunassigned

Error: This operation is not supported with the current configuration. Use the
"show" command on devices to show additional details about the
configuration.


This is a dl385G1 Scsi 36gig drives. What am I not doing properly. What is the step by step to expand drives via command line in linux (CentOS 5.3) to ensure that performance is increased not just capacity. the point is to increase performance.

[TTr]

How many logical disks do you have? Did you try the command with the array name instaed of the logical disk?

root@box1 [~]# hpacucli ctrl slot=0 array A add drives=allunassigned

Also in case the "allunassigned" is confusing, specify the two drives by ID numbers to indicate explicitly that you are adding an even mumber of drives to the raid10 array.

[TTr]

This is very easily done in ACU but I assumed that you don't want to do this in ACU because you want to learn CLI commands.

[Donny Lairson]

root@box1 [~]# hpacucli ctrl slot=0 array A add drives=allunassigned

Error: This operation is not supported with the current configuration. Use the
"show" command on devices to show additional details about the
configuration.


Not easily done in ACU and trying to learn it there was keeping my server offline.

You are also correct in that I want to learn command line way so that I can do this remotely. I had techs at my colocation at $50 bucks an hour finally give up.


I had 4 Drives to start with I added 2 drives to slots 4 and 5. There are currently no lights on those drives. Although on insertion there seemed to be some kind of check taking place with the green arrow.

[TTr]

Did you try

hpacucli ctrl slot=0 physicaldrive all show

Do the new disks show up? If so use their slot address to add the to the existing array

I don't know if you have seen the ACU manual but it has a lot of CLI examples.

[Donny Lairson]

root@box1 [~]# hpacucli ctrl slot=0 physicaldrive all show

Smart Array 6i in Slot 0 (Embedded)

array A

physicaldrive 2:0 (port 2:id 0 , Parallel SCSI, 36.4 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 2:1 (port 2:id 1 , Parallel SCSI, 36.4 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 2:2 (port 2:id 2 , Parallel SCSI, 36.4 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 2:3 (port 2:id 3 , Parallel SCSI, 36.4 GB, OK)

unassigned

physicaldrive 2:4 (port 2:id 4 , Parallel SCSI, 36.3 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 2:5 (port 2:id 5 , Parallel SCSI, 36.3 GB, OK)


I haven't found a good resource to Know all these commands. but happy to post any results needed I am certain that others have this problem as I have read dozens of very unhelpful forum posts.

I thought when I set this server up that all I would have to do is add the extra drives and it would be smart enough to expand the array in my configuration. So either I didn't set it up properly at launch or misunderstood the hardware raids capabilities.

[Donny Lairson]

root@box1 [~]# hpacucli ctrl slot=0 array A add drives=2:4,2:5

Error: This operation is not supported with the current configuration. Use the
"show" command on devices to show additional details about the
configuration.


Just for grins I tried to add them manually as well.

[Donny Lairson]

Did you give up on me?

I did see an option to set configuration with a number 1-7 and a ? but didn't see any place that explained what I would be doing and why.

[TTr · Accepted solution]

I left the office and am home now.

Don't sell yourself short, you set up the server correctly and the commands are good.

The problem seems to be the size of the new drives. The existing ones show up as 36.4GB and the new ones show up as 36.3GB. Since the new drives are smaller (even by that much), the existing raid10 stripes would not fit on the new drives.

Check the model numbers of the drives, old and new to see what drives you need to get.

[Donny Lairson]

Good catch. I just ordered 12 new E Server series 36.4 gig HD's and thats what they say on the label.

So I am assuming there is no way to get the server to ignore this slight of hand by my drive manufacture and this should be a lesson to keep the same brand drives for future upgrades.

Now I have a server on its way back from the data center that I know has a 146 gig and a 76 gig drive in it. So I can use those drives since they will be oversized and just lose the space by doing so.

As I stated before the point is to increase performance not capacity. I have a quarter million pages on my website but its still fairly small in size less than 2 gig.

[TTr]

You have to be careful with arrays and number of drives vs. performance. In general it is true that more drives means more i/o but after a certain number of drives the overhead is so high that performance decreases. Keep in mind that all these drives go on the same scsi bus and you may be hitting a limitation on the scsi bus throughput. The controller also has a limitation in performance as well. The more drives, the more stripes it has to combine to feed the i/o. There is no way to tell what will happen if you add two drives to this array but I would say you might be at the top of the curve right now and adding more drives will mean loss in performance.

[Shayne Heidemann]

You might be better to upgrade the cache and enable battery backed write cache rather than adding drives.

[TTr]

> Donny Lairson: You might be better to upgrade the cache...

The battery is present and OK, the cache memory is available. See original posting

> Battery/Capacitor Count: 1
> Battery/Capacitor Status: OK

What you probably saw is "No-Battery Write Cache: Disabled" This is OK, all it says is that if the battaery dies, the cache will be disabled, which is what you want the controller to do.

[Donny Lairson]

problem was fixed by placing two 76 gig 15k drives in the last two slots so that a "larger" drive was present to allow the software to work properly.

This is a very annoying and unnecessary problem. Because drives are varied in size the initial raid array probably should "round down" to allow for slight variance in drive size when time passes and lots of drives change out in bulk.

posting the commands and results showing problem resolved in case someone searches this up in the future. They don't get a half a post without the fix.

root@box1 [~]# hpacucli ctrl slot=0 array A add drives=allunassigned
root@box1 [~]# hpacucli ctrl slot=0 physicaldrive all show

Smart Array 6i in Slot 0 (Embedded)

array A

physicaldrive 2:0 (port 2:id 0 , Parallel SCSI, 36.4 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 2:1 (port 2:id 1 , Parallel SCSI, 36.4 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 2:2 (port 2:id 2 , Parallel SCSI, 36.4 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 2:3 (port 2:id 3 , Parallel SCSI, 36.4 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 2:4 (port 2:id 4 , Parallel SCSI, 72.8 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 2:5 (port 2:id 5 , Parallel SCSI, 72.8 GB, OK)