LUN expansions for Windows

i make my windows guys use PowerPath migration enabler to migrate to bigger striped devices.

the technical document for PPME says "The target device must be the same size or larger than the source device and

cannot be in use by any application." How can this be achieved ?

how do they set the target lun on the host not to accept any I/Os please ?

What I understood is that we present the target lun to the host and rest is taken care by the windows folks .

The article is simply stating not to configure the new device into your application, don’t create any filesystem and don’t assign a drive letter. PPME will handle the copy process once the lun is visisble to the host.

Here is a simple excel file to generate the commands for online meta expansion. It will create an BCV-meta as big as the original, use it to online expand with data protection, then cleanup. Fill up the following cells :

Meta to expand

Number of members (including the meta head) of the existing meta

First device to add and number of members to add (these members should be existing devices with the same size as the originals)

Protection meta start - this is the start range of members that will be used as protection BCV  meta during the expansion. Starting with this device there should be enough consecutive devices to create the BCV meta with the same meta member count as the original. Same requirements for size as above.

POOL - name of the thin pool for the original and protection metas. Make sure you have enough space, the requirement is that the BCV-meta needs to be fully provisioned before it's used for expansion.

This works for TDEVs, For traditional devices remove the bind/unbind steps.

Hello!

I guess this document will be very helpful for you: http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h729-expanding-win-2000-2003-basic-disks-symmetrix-sys.pdf

even with host side commands.

I know that EMC recommends to use stripe in most cases (as I know the performance is better even for thin environment), but in your case will be good to use concatenated meta, you can make a test to create new one as concatenated and check the performance.

Thanks Paul & EvgenyM

One tip I normally use for the meta expansion is that we require you to create use a BCV device of the same size and configuration as the device you are meaning to expand.  Symconfigure has some copy syntax that can be utilized here to save you doing symdev show and checking cylinder size and config...

e.g.

symconfigure -sid xxx -cmd "configure 1 devices copying dev xxx overriding config=BCV+TDEV;" commit..  Then do a preallocate -persistent on the newly configured BCV+TDEV to ensure we're meeting with all the pre req. 

and yes, it does require a license key. If you are paying maintenance for PP, PPME license is free.

it's a component that typically is selected by default during PP installation

Does PPME require additional software aside from standard PP install and is an additional license needed?

Paul Martin wrote: One tip I normally use for the meta expansion is that we require you to create use a BCV device of the same size and configuration as the device you are meaning to expand.  Symconfigure has some copy syntax that can be utilized here to save you doing symdev show and checking cylinder size and config... e.g. symconfigure -sid xxx -cmd "configure 1 devices copying dev xxx overriding config=BCV+TDEV;" commit..  Then do a preallocate -persistent on the newly configured BCV+TDEV to ensure we're meeting with all the pre req.

please keep in mind that this does not work if source device is in an RDF relationship.

Good Point Dynamox

If you're expanding RDF you need to delete the pairing before doing the expansion and you need to expand both sides and do a full sync. 

Dynamox, do you have a simple procedure documented for PPME? We're a new EMC customer and I tested PPME more than a year ago during a POC but most of our migrations have been done with OR. Also, how do you get the PPME license if you have PP support?

procedure is pretty easy and well documented

PowerPath Migration Enabler 6.x User Guide

PowerPath Migration Enabler 5.7 User Guide

create an SR and specify that you need help with PowerPath licensing. They will forward your SR to the licensing team. You will most likely need to provide an existing PowerPath license key or a sales order number for PowerPath.

Paul Martin wrote: Good Point Dynamox If you're expanding RDF you need to delete the pairing before doing the expansion and you need to expand both sides and do a full sync.

that plus the actual "configure 1 devices copying dev" command does not work if you are trying to "copy" device that has an active RDF relationship.