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December 4th, 2003 23:00
Extending RAID-5 array under Linux
I've got several Linux servers here running on a variety of Dell hardware. I've got a new drive on order for a PE2500 that I'm going to want to add before Christmas and I need to be able to extend the current RAID-5 array to include the additional drive.
As the above server has a lot of critical data on it I'm trying to run through the procedure first on a PE4400. I've got an additional drive for it already which is exactly identical to the 4 drives currently in the array. dellmgr sees the new drive but doesn't seem to give me a way to add it to the existing array. I've seen rumors that there is another command line utility for managing arrays under Linux but the only utilities I can find all refer to Red Hat 6.2 (2.2 kernels). I'm guessing these aren't going to work with a 2.4.x kernel. I've hunted through this forum quite a bit and found lots of evidence that the controller itself supports this (many references to Array Manager under Windows or Netware) but nothing but a broken link for some Linux utilities which don't seem to exist on the Dell support site.
So the question: What if any utilities are available for Linux users to extend RAID-5 arrays on megaraid-based Dell PERC controllers? Or am I spending my Christmas vacation rebuilding this server... :( I'm quite comfortable doing this from a command line.
As the above server has a lot of critical data on it I'm trying to run through the procedure first on a PE4400. I've got an additional drive for it already which is exactly identical to the 4 drives currently in the array. dellmgr sees the new drive but doesn't seem to give me a way to add it to the existing array. I've seen rumors that there is another command line utility for managing arrays under Linux but the only utilities I can find all refer to Red Hat 6.2 (2.2 kernels). I'm guessing these aren't going to work with a 2.4.x kernel. I've hunted through this forum quite a bit and found lots of evidence that the controller itself supports this (many references to Array Manager under Windows or Netware) but nothing but a broken link for some Linux utilities which don't seem to exist on the Dell support site.
So the question: What if any utilities are available for Linux users to extend RAID-5 arrays on megaraid-based Dell PERC controllers? Or am I spending my Christmas vacation rebuilding this server... :( I'm quite comfortable doing this from a command line.
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d3mia7
4 Posts
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December 5th, 2003 22:00
1. Backup all data
2. Install additional hard drives
3. Start dellmgr from the command line
4. Choose 'Reconstruct'
5. Select the new drive(s) and hit Enter
6. Confirm the RAID level, stripe size, etc
7. Choose 'Reconstruct'
8. The RAID recontruct process will start - this will take several hours.
9. After reconstruction is finished the server will need to be rebooted to see the additional space.
I went through this yesterday and it went great! You can find the dellmgr utility by searching support.dell.com for 'R62258'
Naturally you'll have to create a new partition using the added space - if you're using LVM you can just add the space to an lvm vg and you're set. I tested this with evms and it saw the extra space no problem after a reboot. Just create a new segment and then expand your lvm container to include the new segment.
Message Edited by d3mia7 on 12-06-2003 02:14 PM
d3mia7
4 Posts
0
December 18th, 2003 20:00
1. Add the new drive
2. Start afacli (the command line management tool for Adaptec-based PERC controllers)
3. Open the controller - "open afa0" for systems with only one controller, "controller list" to see what you have.
4. Rescan the bus - "controller rescan"
5. List drives - "disk list"
6. The new drive should be listed as "Not Initialized", initialize the drive "disk initialize (0,4,0)" - substitute the correct drive ID from step 5 for (0,4,0) - in this case bus 0, SCSI ID 4, LUN 0
7. Reconfigure the array to include the new drive - "container reconfigure /partition=35566479M 0 (0,4,0)" - the size listed after "partition" is the size of the smallest drive in the array, the '0' is the container number and (0,4,0) is the ID of the drive to add to the array
The first time I did this I left out the /partition=(disksize) switch - this results in the array spanning all drives but not increasing in size. I used the "container reconfigure" command with just the /partition switch and the logical drive number (I left out the ID of the new drive) and was able to expand the array to use the new space.
Hopefully this will be helpful to someone in the future!