Replacing drives of an existing array with higher capacity drives , to increase storage

[Kanagarajusam]

Hi 

Requirement is to upgrade the total storage capacity of a DL360 server by replacing Exising 1.2TB SAS HDDs with 2.4TB SAS HDDs .  Sever has P408i-A controller ,  2  Arrays are configured ( one in RAID 1 for OS & the other in RAID 5 for data ).  Vmware ESXi 7  is running as the Hypervisor.  Drives of both OS and Data arrays are required to be upgraded while preserving the activation /  VMs and other applications .   Please  advise whether replacing drives one by one with higher capacity HDDs expand the storage while retaining the installed applications  and licenses .   

Thanks & Regards

M.kanagaraj

[rabindra11sharm]

Dear  Kanagarajusam

You can extend your RAID5 volume by adding with newly installed drives. Please check this link as RAID5 Expension . after RAID expension you have to expand the ESXI data store too. Please check this for ESXI datastore Expension.

Prequsites for the proccess.

1.  you need same part no HDD installed in empty slot.

2. Do you have at 512 MB of BBWC on this controller.

3. You will need this BBWC for the expansion to work.

4. Take full data backups before doing any activity for disaster recovery.

5. All VM must be on maintanance mode till the activity completion.

If need more concern, feel free reach us, we will happy to help you.

[Kanagarajusam]

Hi, 

Thanks for the response.   Thing is , we would like to replace existing 1.2 TB with 2.4TB drives .  Expansion is ok with additional drives.  But reuqirement is to replace existing 7 Nos of 1.2 TB drives ( 2 in Array 1 in RAID 1 ,  5 Nos in Array 2 in RAID 5 ), with 2.4 TB instead.  Can  i pull one drive from Array 2 and replace it with 2.4TB drive and allow the rebuild to happen in the replaced drive.   This way, can i replace all the 4  remaining drives in the array and get a higher storage capacity in it.    i.e  existing config 1.2 TB x 5 Nos in RAID 5 with usable capacity of  4.8 TB approx. and after replacing all the drives in the array whether i will get the same usable space ( 4.8 TB ) or  2.4TB x 5 Nos ( in RAID 5 ) with an usable capacity of  9.6TB Approx.    For array 1 ( for the ESXi , in RAID 1 ) we would like to do the same thing.  

please advise. 

[rabindra11sharm]

Dear  Kanagarajusam

As per my knowledge, you can not update / expand storage capacity like that.

Once the Virtual Disk created freshly it will occupying maximum available space. after that if you replaced higher capacity HDD for any of HDD from this VD, it will calculate that earlier space limit and use particular space only for rebuild. rest of space will be unalocated space and did not used in future for particular VD.

if you want to realy expand your data storage - 1. you have to take full data backup of that particular VD, delet that VD, replacing all HDD with higher one. re-create VD.  disk assign with OS and re-store backuped data.  2. expand array which proccess already shared earlier. it is also aplicable for RAID 1 also. 

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