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Upgrading the Drives
Hi Experts,
I wonder if someone can help me with either some documentation links or sounds advice regarding my plan to upgrade some drives in our Equallogic system.
The unit has 16 bays and is populated with 8 300GB drives in a RAID 5. What I thought I would do would be to insert 8 x 600Gb drives into the remaining 8 bays and create a new array, then simply copy the data between the existing array made up of the 300GB drives and the new array. Once this had completed I thought I could remove the original array and populate the entire chassis with 600GB drives then expand onto them. Unfortunately, when the new drives are added they just want to build themselves automatically into the existing array.
Can anyone help me with the best way to replace my drives?
Many Thanks
Mark
I wonder if someone can help me with either some documentation links or sounds advice regarding my plan to upgrade some drives in our Equallogic system.
The unit has 16 bays and is populated with 8 300GB drives in a RAID 5. What I thought I would do would be to insert 8 x 600Gb drives into the remaining 8 bays and create a new array, then simply copy the data between the existing array made up of the 300GB drives and the new array. Once this had completed I thought I could remove the original array and populate the entire chassis with 600GB drives then expand onto them. Unfortunately, when the new drives are added they just want to build themselves automatically into the existing array.
Can anyone help me with the best way to replace my drives?
Many Thanks
Mark
DELL-Joe S
7 Technologist
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June 27th, 2011 07:00
What you are suggesting is not possible on the array. The EqualLogic array can only have one RAID set per member (when the array is initially configured, it has a member RAID policy that all disks are configured to), so when you add additional drives, it will only expand the existing RAID set.
You can use disks with different sizes in an array. However, the smallest disk in the array will determine how much space can be used on each disk (this is a functionally of RAID and not the way the array works).
Regards,
Joe
Markb1973
3 Posts
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June 27th, 2011 08:00
Can I ask two more questions then. As we are aiming to repopulate the entire array with 600GB drives we need to remove the existing 300GB ones. If we were to remove these (after copying the data off of course), then inserted the 600GB drives will the array pick them up and allow us to create a new RAID? If so, is this performed within the web console.
Second, if we experience any problems with the new drives / array and need to revert to the original drives, can we just insert the drives again and the array works as before?
Thanks again for your response,
Regards
Mark
DELL-Joe S
7 Technologist
7 Technologist
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729 Posts
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June 27th, 2011 14:00
The two options currently supported are:
If this is a multi-member group, you would need to move all of the volumes off of the array to another member, than delete the member from the group, once deleted from the group, add all 16 new drives and run setup to reconfigure the array from scratch.
If the array is not part of a multi-member group, you would need to copy or backup the data first, reset the array (this will destroy all the data and group information), add the 16 new disks, and run setup to configure the array from scratch.
In both situations you will also need to capture the current configuration either manually or using the “save-config” command. A complete description of the command (and what configuration information is saved) is available on the support site at: support.dell.com/equallogic. Search the KB for “save-config” for the article called “ARRAY: Using the save-config command to save and restore system configuration”
In both caes, the delete member from group and/or reset command will destroy all data on the original RAID set, so reverting back to the original state isn't possible.
Joe
Markb1973
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June 27th, 2011 15:00