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can I replace a drive array

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bookouri

bookouri

IS-IT--Management
Feb 23, 2000
1,464
US
I have an ML530 with 6 18gb drives in one bay configured as RAID5. I have got 6 new 72gb drives because the old array is full and we need more space. I have a backup of the data and the plan is to shut down, remove the old drives, put in the new drives and bring the machine back up, reconfigure the array, then restore the old data to the new drive space. I did a test on an old server though and found that when I removed the old drives from that server, I never got a chance to reconfigure the array. The array configurator would show the array as broken, but it would never let me delete the old array and re-configure. I know Ive done this before, but I must be missing a step somewhere. I dont want to delete the old array because I want to keep the data intact just in case something fails. If I have the old drives intact I can plug them back in and be back in business at least.

Can anyone give me the proper steps to get this done? What am I missing?

thanks for any suggestions...
 
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Hi,

Why not just swap out one drive at a time until all drives are replaced?

I have done this in the past. Swap one drive out and let it rebuild. Once rebuild is complete, swap in the next drive.

Once all drives have been swapped out, expandor extend the array.

Lou
 
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If that is your plan, you would have to run a System Erase from your SmartStart CD after removing the disks. The reason this happens is because the information is held on the Array Controller (as well as the disks) so as far as the Array Controller is concerned, the disks should still be there.

You would obviously have to follow the SmartStart installation from scratch when you have added your new disks into the server as the System Diagnostics Partition will be missing.

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"It's true, its damn true!"
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What Lou0686 suggests works quite well. As alway make sure you have good backups before you start. I have never had it fail. You could also just create a new partition when complete if that makes sense.

If the 6 drive raid set contain your OS the best bet is to blow it away. A best practice with money not an object would be to seperate your OS disks from your storage disks. Then you would have many more options.
 
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I have also swapped the drives individually and had success. This would be a far easier option than backing up and restoring because it can be done on the fly with no down time.

This procedure does come with it's risks, however. For example, I have had a situation whereby the replacement would not rebuild into the existing array because of corruption in the array. Whilst this may be an extreme case (as the server hardware was old), I see no reason why an ML530 would not handle the procedure as I have carried this out many times on ML530 G1 servers.


-----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
-----------------------------------------------------
 
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I didnt think i would be able to swap out the drives individually since the new drives are not the same size. That would be great if it could be done that way.
 
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Hi,

The drives you are adding need to be of a saize equal to or greater that the existing disks. You cannot swap them out for smaller drives.

Lou
 
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The new drives are of greater size than the existing drives. So.. if I replace 1 existing 18gb drive with 1 new 36db drive and continue doing that until i have replaced all 6 of the 18gb drives and have 6 36gb drives can I THEN use the new drive space? or will the Compaq still see the 6 36gb drives as 18gb drives?



 
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As I stated earlier, you will have to go into the array configuration utility and expand or extend the array.

I don't remember which is which but one option allows you to make your logical drive large where the other option will allow you to create another logical drive.

One note here: With one of the options, you will need to create another NetWare partition, if your OS is NetWare. This is important because NetWare only allows 4 partions per drive. If you have The System Partition on the drive, you have 3 in total now. Ssystem, DOS and NetWare.

I do not know the ramifications if you are running Windows. You need to investigate that.

If you have NetWare you should look into the 2 options you have and which is best for you.

Lou
 
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I am running win2k and Ive been digging through HP trying to get information. There appear to be "issues" with some array controller firmware versions and expanding the drive, but the HP links to the firmware updates dont work and so now Im digging around trying to find the right versions of everything....

it will be worth it if it works....I guess <G>

 
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I have heard a horror story or two about expanding arrays within the RAID controler when the OS was on the RAID set being modified.

I have never doen it to an OS partition myself so I can't say for sure how well it would work. I have doen this lots of times when OS was not involved. Upgrade your drive and RAID controller firmare and RAID controler drivers first as a precaution.

You could also swap all of the drives anyway and use the extra space to create a new volume (minimal risk) ,and then either move some of your shared data to the new volume.

If you need to add this space to the existing volume for some reason you could use W2K Dynamic Disk functionality to add the space to an existing volume as well. Normaly works fine but I always feel much better about letting my RAID controller handle this for performance and reliabilty reasons.
 
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Well after two days of ROM pacs and Driver updates, here's where Ive gotten to.

On a Compaq ML530 server, I started out with 6 X 18gb drives and had an 84gb drive. One at at time I replaced the 18gb drives with 72gb drives ending up with 6 X 72 = 432 gb,
but when I run HP/Compaq Array Configuration Utility it indicated I could expand my RAID5 logical drive to a maximum of 261116mb. So I expanded to the max and that yields me a drive of 254gb. But when I go back into ACU there is still 103446mb of unused &quot;free&quot; space available to be used for another logical drive. Im using Win2K Server and dynamic disks. Can anyone explain to me how all this fits. I thought Windows Server maximum drive limits would be in the terabyte range.. why couldnt I use the remaining 103446mb in my expanded RAID5 logical disk? Is it a hardware limit, an OS limit.. can anyone tell me what is going on here?

thanks for any suggestions...
 
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Not a windows limit for sure.

There are different ways it could have been built initialy.

Was your 1 84 GB drive all one windows volume? (ie C:) Or did you have it partitioned into multiple volumes? (ie C: E: F: etc)

If there are mutliple volumes were they created via windows on one virtual drive? (Windows sees the RAID set as a single drive)

Or was the RAID set partitioned via the RAID controller? (looks like different drives to windows)

This would have a big impact on the way the expansion behaved.

Sounds like the array expansion worked the way it was supposed to. You could still format the unused space and combine volumes using dynamic disk functionality.

 
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The original raid5 disk was formatted as one large NTFS drive. Once I had the new disks installed the Compaq utilities only let me expand to fill part of the new available space. Windows then saw that as more space on the same Dynamic Drive volume.. ie I went from an 85 gb drive to a 254+gb drive... then the Compaq utility let me go back and make another volume of the last 84+ gb of space, which Windows then saw as available and allowed me to create a New drive..so now I have my original e: drive which was 85gb and is now 250+gb and I have a new f: drive which is 84+gb...everything seems to be working fine and I have enough space for the original application so that Ill be retired before it has to be upgraded <G>... but I still wonder why the Compaq hardware utilities behaved the way it did..

 
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