Novell 6.5 Increase sys volume

[3063]

We need to upgrade our Novell Server to 6.5. However, our sys volume is only 4 GB and the requirement is 10 GB. All our RAID drives are partitioned. But, we have another RAID bay that we could purchase drives for. My question is, if we purchased drives, is it possible to use those drives to expand the sys volume? Hope this make sense?

 

[LawnBoy]

A volume can only grow to the size of the pool it is in. Chances are your SYS pool is only 4GB as well. AFAIK, you can't resize pools, you have to blow them away and recreate them.

Spanning a volume over two physical disks doubles your chances of failure...

 

[marvhuffaker]

4GB 'should' be big enough. I don't believe 10GB has ever been listed as a requirement. If you keep SYS for system stuff only and put data and other stuff somewhere else, it should work.

Marvin Huffaker, MCNE

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[LawnBoy]

4GB is the default size for 6.5. 10GB is easier to deal with but 4 will be ok as long as you don't let old SPs gobble all your space.

I've got a NW 6.5 box running GroupWise 6.5 with a 4GB SYS vol.

 

[3063]

This requirement 10 GB was mandated by our main office, so I assumed it was Novell's requirement for 6.5. And I keep our sys volume clean. However, it is still not going to resolve my problem. I was hoping adding drives to the second raid would resolve it. I guess another alternative would be to temporarily move all the application on the vol partition to another server and then remove that partition. Then add 6 GB to the sys and then repartition the rest for vol. Them move the applications back.

 

[marvhuffaker]

I'm guessing that your Main office mandated 10GB because the main office person mandating things is used to Windows servers. And they don't want anything to be different, so all Windows and Novell servers are mandated to have 10GB on the system volume. I've been through the same thing with some of our government projects.. 10GB is a complete waste of space. You really only need 5 to be comfortable. I usually go 6 or 8 just to keep the free space around 80%.

You can span a pool to a new drive or partition.. This is acceptible if it is within the same RAID array (assuming you can expand the array to the new disks). Don't span over array controllers or onto external chassis. I don't like to span LOGICAL DRIVE 1 onto LOGICAL DRIVE 2 either, even on the same controller. Some RAID controllers handle this type of stuff differently, so it depends on what you're running.

You could also use Portlock Storage manager to resize the pools.

Marvin Huffaker, MCNE

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[3063]

Thank you. That's exactly what I needed to know.