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Merging Multiple Groups
Hi there,
We've got three arrays, each of which is configured into a standalone group consisting of one member. This was done for historical reasons which aren't really relevant anymore.
Assuming I've got them all revved to the same firmware, what will it look like to merge the three groups into one? Is there a way to do this while keeping volumes intact or am I in a house of pain here?
Anonymous
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November 30th, 2011 18:00
Hello,
There's no way currently to merge groups together and leave the data intact. If you have enough room, you can replicated from one array to another. Promote the volumes and re-login. Then reset that array, add it to that group and repeat the process for the third array.
Sometimes its easier to move the data at the host level, get the most critical volumes over and backup the rest if you don't have enough free space to replicate them.
Regards,
Anonymous
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December 1st, 2011 10:00
Some of it depends on the OS. I.e. with ESX you can use storage vMotion to move VMs live. Saving the replication, pause, promote, etc....
I do allot of Linux, so I use 'rsync' to do the heavy lifting live. Then when I'm ready to cut over, shutdown the server. Use rsync to get the last bits. Then restart server on the new volume. Delete the old. Just did that recently for a volume with nearly 3TB of data.
Depending on your normal load, you can do a combo of replication / host copy to get more data in flight at once.
taupehat
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December 1st, 2011 09:00
So the answer is "house of pain." Drat. The good news is I have a brand-new array I haven't done anything with yet so I have plenty of room to replicate things hither and yon. The bad news is it's going to take forever to do it all. Does anyone have a suggested method to make this faster?
Provogeek
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July 9th, 2013 16:00
Is this still true? Is it still not possible to merge groups?
Dev Mgr
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July 9th, 2013 20:00
This is indeed still true; you cannot merge groups.
Anonymous
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October 14th, 2014 13:00
There is a tech report explaining how tiering works, and the admin guide shows how to put mulitple members in the same pool, but "best practice" is what works best for you in your environment.
Tiering TR:
en.community.dell.com/.../EqualLogic-PS-Series-Architecture-_2D00_-Load-Balancers.pdf
You are free to put these in the same pool. They need to be the same firmware, preferably v7.0.9.
schwinger04
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October 14th, 2014 13:00
With version 7 out, is this still the case?
Anonymous
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October 14th, 2014 13:00
Hello,
Correct, neither FW v7 nor the upcoming FW v8 support merging groups directly.
schwinger04
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October 14th, 2014 13:00
Where can I find the best practices for configuring multiple members within a group. For example, i have a PS4100(24 x 10K 600GB SAS), PS6000(16 x 15K 450GB SAS), and PS6100(24 x 10K 600GB SAS) that I want to group, preferably in the same Storage Pool, and leverage load balancing to tier the data.