Adding members to RAID array, will VSphere see it?

[Goatman88]

Environment: Vsphere 4.0, HP server with onboard RAID adapter.

One of the volumes on the adapter consists of 4 members in a RAID5 array. I found out from HP that I can add members to expand the array without disturbing the data already there. The volume is already setup in VMWare as a single datastore.

My question is, once I've added the new array members, will VMWare automatically pick up the increased size and correspondingly increase the size of the datastore?

 

[bshubinsky]

You'll probably have to go into Configuration -> Storage on the host and go into the Properties of the datastore and then do an increase before it sees it.

 

[Goatman88]

Thanks for your reply.

To extend the datastore I've no doubt you're right about going into the properties of and doing an increase . I just want to be sure it will see the increased availability of space. I assume it should but I've never done this kind of thing before where you add members to a live RAID array so I don't know if there's anything special that needs to be done to enable VMWare to see the change.

 

[bshubinsky]

Once you add drives into your RAID array you'll need to expand the volume using extents. The drives themselves should be OK. Do you need the space on that particular volume? If not you could create an additional RAID and add it as another datastore.

 

[Goatman88]

I definitely want to put the space on the volume. I'm down to my last 2 slots on the drive array and it makes more sense to add them to an existing RAID5 array than setting them up as a mirrored pair in terms of the amount of space realized.

Thanks again for the input.