iDRAC 9 GUI - PERC Virtual Disk Online Capacity Expansion (OCE)

Question

I recently got asked in class to explain the method of how to expand a virtual disk using the iDRAC GUI. In this post I’ll outline the procedure involved.   Online Capacity Expansion (OCE) can be done in the following  ways: If there is a single virtual disk in a disk group and free space is available. The virtual disk’s capacity can be expanded within that free space. If a virtual disk is created and it does not use the maximum size of the disk group, free space is available.  A virtual disk's capacity can also be expanded by performing an OCE operation to add more physical disks. A couple of important points to remember. Note: The controller changes the write cache policy of all virtual disks undergoing an RLM/OCE to Write-Through until the RLM/OCE is complete. This will therefore impact the Virtual disk performance until the operation is complete Note: Spanned virtual disks such as RAID 50, and 60 cannot be reconfigured. We recommend performing a backup before any RAID Reconfiguration.   Option 1 – Free Space available In the example below I have a Raid 1 Disk Group configured which is 1.1TB in size. The virtual disk that resides in the Raid 1 is currently 10GB in size. To use the remining free space and expand the Virtual disk click on the action drop down menu and select Edit Disk Capacity.     The menu will display the current capacity of the Virtual disk and how much free space (101.250 GB) is available in the Raid 1.       To increase the virtual disk size, type in the raid capacity you want the Virtual disk to be. In the example below I increased the capacity from 10GB to 20GB. Notice the new capacity has changed. Click apply for the settings to take affect.   Click apply now.     You can check the status of the operation in the Job Queue.     Once the job completes, we’ll see the new  Virtual disk size.     Option 2 –  No Free Space available. Expand the raid level by adding a disk. The second option when no free space is available and the Virtual Disk needs to be expanded, is to add another disk to increase the capacity of the raid level. In the example below we have a raid 5 to view the member disks click 'view physical disks' from the actions drop down menu     It will list the member disks that make up the raid 5. We can see that there is 3 x 750GB disks which gives us a total capacity of 1.489 TB in the Raid 5.     Going back to the Virtual disk Tab we see the Virtual Disk is using all the available capacity - 1489.25GB.     To increase the capacity, we first need to expand the Raid 5 by an additional disk to do so click the 'Edit Disk Capacity' option from the actions drop down menu.     We can see from the 'Expand Virtual Disk Capacity' page that there is no free space currently available. The only option we have is to add another disk to the raid level by clicking the 'Add Physical Disk' button.   It will list any available disks that can be used. In the example below we have one disk in the backplane that is currently available. Tick the box beside 'Connector' and click 'Add Disks'.   Notice the new disk appears, click 'Apply' to add it to the raid level.   Click 'Apply Now' to run the job.   To view the operation, click 'Job Queue'.     Once the job completes,  the capacity of the Virtual disk will be expanded by the total of the newly added disk.   In the next post we’ll discuss how to reconfigure/change a raid level – stay tuned!

Infor Mei · Accepted Answer

Same problem too. Getting error PR21 Job failed.

DELL-Geeta MKS · Answer

Thank you, Emmet! Looking forward to the 'how to reconfigure/change a raid level ' discussion post.

SG_DK · Answer

Is there a similar option in IDRAC8? I can't seem to find it? I need to expand the raid capacity with the free space from the disk group?

Dell-BarryOSullivan · Answer

Hi Emmet, great info on disk expansion, thanks for sharing

knutguenther · Answer

Hi Emmet, I try to follow exactly your Option 1 explainations which is totally clear to me. Thanks for that! I replaced all PDs within my RAID6 VD (by hot swap and rebuild). And I try now an OCE. The job states first Running 1% but stops after 20 seconds with Error Code: PR21: Failed This is strange because the new SSDs should have enough free space as they are double the size now. Do you could help here? Sorry, iDrac GUI is german.

DrVic2023 · Answer

I have the exact same problem. OCE starts and after 20 secs on 1%. It reports failed. Help us, please

szeran · Answer

Hi, I have the same problem on the R540 (PERC H730P). Has anyone managed to fix this?

Xpress234 · Answer

@szeran​ Hi, did you figure it out ? I have similar issue with RAID1 configuration. THX !

mmarkowski · Answer

Same problem too on a T340 H730P. Tried 'apply now' and 'apply on next reboot' and both failed.

saneca · Answer

I'm having the exact same problem on a Dell R740 when trying to use OCE to expand from 2TB SSD's to 4TB SSD's.  This method worked perfectly on our R440, but for some reason the R740 starts at 1% and fails very quickly. Anyone have any luck figuring out what the problems was/is?

saneca · Answer

After doing some more research on this, it seems that if the drives are setup as RAID 10 that the OCE doesn't work.  Apparently it only works on RAID 0,1,5,6.  Which might be why my other server (R440) worked so easily.  Can anyone confirm if I'm looking at having to move all the data and reformat the RAID 10 virtual disk to utilize the increase in capacity?

Auro.MaPikka · Answer

I have a RAID1 with 2 physical drives. Did a hot swap from 960 GB SSDs to 1.92 TB SSDs. Rebuild went 100% optimal all green.

Selected the action to increase the virtual drive capacity to the max > PR21 error (be it "Apply"(now) or "Apply at next reboot". iDRAC shows that there's available space to increase to but it won't.

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