IBM Xseries 235

[zodiaczz]

Hello all,

I have a xseries 235 IBM server with a Mirror C drive for the operating system. I also have a 3 disk RAID 5 for Data which is a D drive in windows. The customer wants to extend his D Drive free space. I bought a new Hard drive to add to the array. Here are the steps I performed.

1. Installed the new drive
2. Installed ServeRAID
3. Added a logical Drive to Array B (this was the RAID array)
4. It then went into a rebuilding phase that took over 15 hours
5. Next day , rebooted server, the array was created but I did not see it in Windows data managment
6. In the ServeRAID, went to the array and created a new logical drive (using the new drive created)
7. Drive created, took about 1 hour to sync with RAID 5
8. Rebooted machine, went into windows, saw there drives
Drive 0 (mirrored) Drive 1 (D drive data and part of RAID 5) and Drive 3 my new drive
9. I extended the volume from Drive 1 (D Drive) to my new logical drive(which is also part of the RAID now) resulting in a spanned volume with the D drive now having the extra free space I desired.

woo now that is over here is my question. Though I got my final result that I needed, was this the correct procedure, was there an easier and faster way to do this, IBM support is quite difficult to follow. I usually work on Compaq Servers and the RAID rebuild never took that long. I was kind of expecting to see an addition of space to my Drive 1 and not having to expand the volume onto another drive, is that the only way

Thoughts?

Thanks

 

[Stiddy]

I probably would have ran a backup on drive d:. Booted servRIAD cdrom and deleted the riad 5. Added new HD. Scanned for new hardwaredrive. Created a new RAID 5. Booted windows. You would have to create a new partition with the new freespace. restore D drive from tape or another source.

BTW - Just wanted to give you a big hint that took me a while to learn. You can write to the drives while the raid is building. No need to wait 15 hours.