Removing 1 drive from an array 2

[jimmyritch]

I have a smart array controller with 1 drive array setup with 3 different logical drives all on raid 5, I wish to remove logical drives 2 and 3 so i can place them in another server. Was thinking of migrating them then removing the drives.
Any ideas on the best way forward

Regards
Jim

 

[QuiltedCamel]

Simple - back it all up, back it all up again, check your backups (both of them), blatt the drive array, configure it the way you want it and restore the data.

That might not be the answer you were hoping for but it's the only realistic way you'll get the job done.

 

[jimmyritch]

Thanks for the thread QuiltedCamel, I was hopeing there would be another way around this as this is the main file server. Unfortunately a previous incarnation of an IT guy built the server like this for unknown reasons and its run out of space. Looks like ruthlessnes on data is the way forward for a while.

Cheers

 

[QuiltedCamel]

Been there and done it before - you might find it easier to expand your array by some drive swapping:

If you have a RAID array made of (say) 9Gb drives, you can swap one out for a larger drive (say 18Gb) and let the array rebuild. Then when it's rebuilt (you can see in Insight Manager when it's done, or if you don't have IM setup and don't want to do so, leave it 24hours) swap the next drive out in the same way and keep doing it until you've swapped all of them.

Then into the Array Configuration Utility and you ought to see a pile of free space - which you can assign to a new logical drive (partition) and then assign space on that new partition to your logical drives as appropriate.

Disclaimer: It depends on the vintage of your array controller if this will work reliably - I've tried it on Smart-2/DH, 3200, 4200 and 5i and it worked for me.

If you have a similar server elsewhere that's less critical - try it - experiment a little, learn a lot

Take a backup, and give it a try - at the end of the day the worst case is you need to restore.

 

[d3crypt4]

Yeah QC's hit the nail on the head there. That way works like a peach - done it many times on 3k controllers and 5i ones.

 

[ricpinto]

I have an idea for experimenting, never tried it b4 (don't laugh). . Here how it goes, take a very big IDE HDD that u can find. Duplicate your logical drive (ghost it) to the IDE HDD. Try booting to the IDE HDD. If it can, delete and reconfigure your logical drive. Ghost it again from IDE HDD to your logical drive. If it works please tell me . . I have no spare server that's why I can't experiment this..

 

[MrTickle]

Thing is, wouldn't the OS not boot as it would be looking for SCSI controllers\disks and not IDE???

 

[d3crypt4]

You could do it that way, but it would take a fairly extensive amount of installation/registry work. It's certainly not as simple as it sounds (for instance, the OS will, as MrT points out, try to start the driver for the array on boot up and will blue screen when it can't).

What you COULD do, though, is image your server off to an IDE drive, reconfigure your array, then ghost it back from the image file without trying to boot inbetween. There's no real reason to boot to it anyway. Depends how confident you are with ghost, but that should work.

 

[ricpinto]

Thanks man, you got me there.

To summarize what Mr. d3crypt4 above idea:

1. Format IDE drive FAT32 from a boot disk or from the OS.

2. boot and start your image program.. choose option "disk(logical drv) to image (ide drv)".

3. reconfigure your logical drive. go back to no 2 and do the reverse.

Lastly, do a back up first b4 doing this

 

[mousseman]

And does the expansion procedure work as well when the partition on that used-to-be-nondynamic disk was created before it was made dynamic?

I was once tasked with the expansion of a logical disk on an EVA12000 SAN array. In the SAN appliance console, I assigned some additional diskspace, rescanned the disks on the server in question, made it dynamic and tried to expand it - and the OS refused to do it. What I had to do is to nuke all partitions on that disk (the one to be expanded was the first one on the logical disk) and then recreate them on the now-dynamic disk. To check, I added another 5 GB to that logical disk and expanded the partition seamlessly.

Of course, everything on Win2k. If you have NT4, you're basically still screwed.

 

[d3crypt4]

To the best of my knowledge imaging off, reconfiguring the array and re-imaging back will work no matter what OS or what dynamic/static disk organisation under that OS. I've never knowingly tried it with disks set up as dynamic before doing the process, so I can't say for absolute certain, but I'm unaware of a reason as to why that wouldn't work. Interesting question though - I may play a bit at the weekend.