HP ML530 - Adding New Drives

[ereid99]

I have a HP ML530 G2 server. I have two drive cages installed each capable of holding 6 drives each. This server is running Windows 2000 Adv. Server and Exchange 2000.

Current setup:
- Five 36GB drives in one cage, second cage is empty (this leaves room for 7 more drives)
- Used Compaq's SmartStart to configure the array (RAID5 + 1 spare)
- 3 Logical drives:
- C: - 12GB - System Drive
- D: - 30GB - Exchange Transaction Logs
- E: - 60GB - Exchange Database files

I'm running out of space on the E: drive so I need to add some more drives. I currently have three 36GB drives that I can add and hope to have four more come availabe later this summer.

My question is can I add these three 36GB drives to the existing array and extend the logical drive E: by the space added? The only other option I see is adding the three 36GB drives as a new RAID5 array and converting the drives in Windows to dynamic. Then add the new space to drive E:.

Can anyone confirm either of these options or offer a different one?

Thanks for the help.

 

[cabracy]

It works on a 5300 controller so it should also work on the built in controller. Add the drives, boot with smart start and go to array maintenance and add the drives to the array.

You can also replace the drives with larger ones. Just pull a drive, replace it with a larger one, waiting for the blinking lights to stop, and repeat for all drives. You can do this without taking the server down. Just realize that your redundnacy is lost during the operation, so a drive failure will kill the array.

It will look like unpartitioned space. I'm not sure how that looks to Windows, but it works well under NetWare.

Chris.

 

[TheLad]

I guess that once the additional unpartitioned space becomes available, you will have to use something like Partition Magic to stretch your E: across to use the new diskspace?

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[ereid99]

I talked to one of the other guys at work and he thought the 5300 controller was new enough that it would recognize the new drives and let me add them to the existing array like cabracy said. He went on to say he thought I could allocate the new space from withing the SmartStart software to my existing drives (c:, d:, or e any way I wanted. Then when Windows boots it would be able to use the new space like it was always there.

Can anyone confirm or deny this for me?

Thanks again for the help.

 

[terry712]

you will be able to add to array no probs

as for windows allowing you to add to the c: d: or e: - i doubt it unless you use partition magic or such like and as long as they arent dynamic

 

[AdmanOK]

As long as your RAID controller card has a battery backed up cache (i.e. there are batteries on the card) then Compaq will allow you to extend the array. The concern is that without the battery backed cache you could lose the entire data in the event of a power failure. Once you have added the drives to the machine and incorporated them into the array then you should be able to extend the existing E: drive to include the new available space on partition. Windows will allow you to extend a partition unless it is the boot or system partition (which from the sounds of it E: is neither).

 

[ereid99]

Well all went well with this. Thanks again for all the help. Just for the info. I was unable to use PartitionMagic (used 8.0) to expand drive e: to use the free space added. I got a message that said it wouldn't work on NT/2000/.NET servers. I had to get a little program called DiskPart from Microsoft to add the new free space to my existing e: drive.

 

[ntinlin]

Partition Magic hasn't been able to do server drives since v5 unfortunately. You have to get Volume Magic which is ten times the price, surprise, surprise.
But as you found there are other cheaper solutions out there.