adding disks to an existing virtual disk on AX150

Yea, this can be done. This is what ya have to do:

1) Add the disks to the AX150 (this can be done hot)
2) Once the drives are installed, check and make sure they show up under devices in Navisphere.
3) In navisphere click on the raid group (disk pool) the virtual disk you are trying to exapnd resides on.
4) Once clicking on that disk pool, scroll down to the bottom and click expand disk pool and put a check mark next to the new disk you are adding and then expand (this is non disruptive to data access).
5) After the raid group has finished trainsitioning which may take awhile.... go click on the virutal disk
6) Scroll down to the bottom and click expand (virtual disk).
7) Choose the amount of new space you want to add, then click expand.
8) Now... wait for it to finish expanding.... and your done on the storage side...

Now just go to microsofot site and get diskpart and expand the parition and your done. This all can be donw while the server and storage system is up. Also remember the sweet things about this is that it is non disurptive and original data is still intact although it is always best practice to have a backup of data before executing this procedure.


Tootles,
Woodsta

Message was edited by:
woodsta

Hi Woodsta,

thanks for your detailed description. I guess, we can skip the part with Microsoft's Diskpart, if the available space is to remain the same, since we (only) want to achieve higher performance rather than more diskspace. We could later on still create a new virtual disk, assign it in w2k3 and use it as a new separate disk. Correct?
Thanks again and regards,
Carlos

When I add the disks as described by Woodsta, I guess that only data after the expansion will be spread over all disks of the virtual disk and the data before the expansion resides on the "old" disks. Is that correct? If so, is there a chance in spreading all data over the old and the new disks as if they were just copied onto the server? Or do we have to make a backup, destroy the virtual disk, create it again and then copy the data back on?

No microsoft diskpart is needed unless you want to expand a virtual disk and want the server to access the additional space.

You first assumption is correct, the more disk in the raid group typically you get higher performance spread across more disks. No need to backup and spread the data back over the raid group, the storage unit does this for you.


Tootles,
Woodsta

Well, that sounds like good news to me. Hopefully we'll get next week to do the changes. Thanks very much for your help. By the way, my college communicated with EMC support and was told that we have to create the virtual disk new, meaning all data would be lost... Maybe there was a misunderstanding, who knows. Thanks again and regards, Carlos.

HUH?? Who told ya that. Being able to expand a virtual disk is the great part about a SAN.. there is no data loss and you can run an expansion hot while the server is accessing the storage. Howbeit one FYI is always make sure you have a backup of the virtual disk your are expanding and also you will take a small performance hit while the virtual disk is expanding. You know.... best practice yada yada stuff.


Woodsta

Message was edited by:
woodsta

Yep, I'd always have a backup done before doing any changes of that kind. Keeps me from a lot of trouble in case of...
All I can say is that my colleague told me, according to the emc support, the virtual disc will have to be destroyed and, after having added the new disks to the diskpool, being created new again.
Unfortunately, I was referred to give my request directly to Dell when trying to contact emc myself. Therefore I had no chance to talk to the support of emc...And as far I'm informed, we do not have the support from DELL for these "specific questions". All not that easy...Therefore, thanks again for your help!

No problem and you should not run into any problems doing that, I do it all the time even while my servers are up if needed. It's the "beautiful" part of having a SAN.

Just post back here if you have questions, we are always in the forums. Hey, just food for thought. When you call into Dell don't give them the service tag of the server, give them the service tag of the AX150 and they should route you to a group that supports AX and CX series SAN's and can walk you through the expansion on the phone. They are an EMC partner.


Have a good weekend,
Woodsta

just to round up this thread...
I've expanded the disks and everything went fine. It took around 30-35 hours to complete the expansion of 2 TB. Not a very nice feeling having the expansion status freezed at 0% for the first three hours. After around 3.5 hours, it reached 1%, which made me quite happy since I wasn't sure if the system may have hung up. But in the end it worked out fine. Backup was obviously done before. The long time taken was due to having it done during office hours, but there was no other way to do this.
Concerning Dell support: I've contacted Dell now myself, was then led to an EMC support (also from dell) which then was very helpful.
Thanks again and best regards,
Carlos

Cool man, cool.
Come back and visit us!!!


Woodsta