Adding a hard disk to a RAID5 configuration

Witor

Witor

Witor

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Got a situation here at work where we've been handed an IBM x3650 with the following:

1x OS hard disk, partitioned into an OS and shadow copies partition

3x IBM 450GB Drives, as a RAID5 unit (total approx 830GB)

1x IBM 450GB Drive, to be added into the RAID5.

Question :)

Can the additional 450GB Drive be added into the existing RAID5? Client wants it done relatively quickly and tbh it's not my speciality.

Im guessing it's a case of shutdown server, add additional hard disk to RAID5 array, then boot into Windows 2008 and resize parition to suit?

Time is short, there is a backup offsite in case things go wrong but Im assuming this should not affect files currently on the array?
 
Depends entirely on the controller that is hosting the raid 5 array. If the card does not support expansion then your best bet is to run a backup, nuke the Raid-5, recreate then restore.
 
This sort of question has been asked a few times around here before.

I'd always do a backup/restore in this sort of situation
 
As far as I know the serveraid will support raid expansion (may depend on exact model) but that still leaves the OS requiring partition expansion to use the space.


I'll guess you have an 8k in that server

This probably explains it and any limits it may have - you might need to boot of the raid manager disk rather than use the one installed in the OS. Not something I have done to be fair.

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/eserver/v1r2/index.jsp?topic=/diricinfo/fqy0_cldmigra.html
 
Nodirection said:
Cheers for the answers, going to be doing this tonight :)
Click to expand...

PLEASE backup before you do. It'll expand fine 99 times, but the 100th time will be the one that fails and you find out that the scheduled backups have actually been failing for some time leaving you totally exposed!
 
We just carried this out on about 60 servers running a very arcane Intel RAID array. Only one borked and had to be rebuilt.

So its viable, relatively straightforward to do, bu thas its risks.

As a previous poster said, make sure you have backups.
 
Sorry, had a few issues with my username/forum over the past week or so ;)

So...upon further investigation we found the Raid5 was a software-based one, i.e done in Windows 2008, and there was no way of "adding" the extra 450GB drive. Seemed a silly way of doing things, and im surprised the disk manager in W2008 didnt allow the addition of a new drive to an existing RAID-5, but hey...

Data was backed up, drives re-raided via SeveRAID (with 4 drives this time) and data moved back on.

No major problems, thanks for the advice lads.
 
That was the problem.

The 3 450GB SCSI drives were setup up as a RAID5 array in Windows 2008, as a dynamic array. However it looks like natively, Windows 2008 has no way of adding an unallocated drive into the dynamic array, just the replacement of existing drives in said array.

The only option available for the spare drive was "new simple volume". Upon formatting one could convert to dynamic yes, but still no option natively in W2008 to add the drive to the existing array.
 
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