RAID 5 disk reallocation

[PINESLIVING]

Hello Community

This is the situation. I have an HP PROLIANT GEN 10 running Windows 2016. There are 6 spinning HDDs running RAID 5, configured as 2 logical drives. Recently I increased the size of the spinning HDDs from 360 Gb to 2.4 Tb each. I used the Smart Storage Administrator 4.21.7.0 to expand the RAID. I cannot recall how I did it. It seems that option in the UI is now exhausted

The problem is the newly created space went into Logical Drive 1. I need that space to be reallocated to Logical Drive 2. 

I cannot see any option in the Smart Storage Administrator to move free space from Logical Drive 1 to Logical Drive 2. Given they are just shared space in RAID 5, why is that option not available? Windows Disk Management Utility does not help either, as Windows sees two immutable disk drives.

Any practical suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Goran

[SydUmar_1]

Hello Goran / PINESLIVING,

Ideally the option to chose the Logical Drive must have appeared once the drives were added. But as they're already a part of Logical Drive 1, it cannot be migrated to Logical Drive 2 and that's why the options will not appear on the HPE Smart Storage Administrator. Unfortunately, we would have to delete and existing arrays/logical drives and recreate as per your requirement. 

On a side note, please get the latest HPE Smart Storage Administrator installed from here - https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/swd/detail?swItemId=MTX_cf65375fb33449fabfe61d5671

[PINESLIVING]

Hi SydUmar_1 HPE PRO,

Thank you for clarifying the options or lack of such in this scenario

I am preparing a full backup before deleting the drives

HPE should provide an option to reallocate empty disk space between logical drives. I expect that would not be difficult to do

Regards

Goran

[SydUmar_1]

Hello Goran,
Expanding a logical array is possible only once (Once new drives are installed). Once that has been expanded you would not have an option to split/migrate between different Logical Drives. Its as per design. 

[PINESLIVING]

Hi SydUmar_1 HPE PRO

I'm afraid I have to disagree. I understand it is impossible to reallocate the space using the current software version. However, that option should be added to the next upgrade of the "Smart Storage Administrator"

In Windows, for example, you can partition a single disk drive into multiple logical drives and then reallocate free space from one to the other. There are some limitations, as you cannot insert free space between existing logical drives. But in this case, that is precisely what the SSA did, inserting the free space not to the second logical disk but to the first one, so it seems it can rearrange the space in RAID 5 arbitrarily. HPE should invest money into providing this option and sparing us of the terrible pain of blowing away the configuration and rebuilding it.

I have nothing further to add to this

Cheers

Goran