RAID 5 array capacity upgrade... Can anyone help with procedure?

[Magicthyse]

Hiya folks

I'm sitting at home and I have to get this quote out tonight, and Sods law strikes - my chief tech didn't come in to the office today, off ill or something, and I can't contact either of my engineers. Perhaps you can help me out???? Thanx!

There's a client with an HP LC2000 with a Netraid-2M. They're running 4 x 9Gb drives at the moment, and I have to take them to 4 x 32Gb. Both RAID 5.

I have to quote for this, but I was unsure of what the work involved was - so can't set a cost! Am I correct in assuming that to migrate an array with different disks, you have to effectively re-install the server (i.e. backup, unplug old, plug new, restore?)

 

[Nothinman]

I'm pretty sure that's the only way. Some of our new Compaq equipment will let you add drives to an array dynamically but not migrate to a whole new array.

 

[bozo1]

Your quickest and easiest way would be to backup, rebuild and restore. With the Compaq Raid controllers, and I'm pretty sure the HP's, you can do an online expansion but that's a long process. You have to yank one 9-gig drive, put in the larger one, let the array rebuild which can take hours. Once that is done, swap out another drive, let it rebuild, and so on. Once all that is done, you can do an online expansion of the array with the extra space but you have to create another partition out of it - you can't add it to your existing one without using 3rd party tools that sometimes simply don't work.

 

[Magicthyse]

Thanks folks!