Hyper expansion is possible ?

Question

Hi ,

I allocated few luns today to a windows host for testing purpose.and tried doing a stripe expansion.

the issue we are facing is the disk which is allocated to the host is 34 GB in size. it is a tdev and the max hyper size in our vmax is 34 GB

so the lun which is allocated to the host is not a meta but a hyper of 34 GB. I want to expand this Hyper .

Is this possible , what are the limitations (if possible)

Also , data integrity will be there or not.

codyhosterman · Accepted Answer

It can be turned into a metavolume non-disruptively but it depends on what type of meta configuration you want. If you want a concatenated metavolume you can simply convert it into a concat meta with no host downtime. Specify the in-use device as the meta head. The member(s) that are to be added must be unbound and not have any masking records. This has been enabled in SE and Enginuity for well over a year or so. If you want a striped metavolume it has a few extra steps though. Converting a single volume into a striped volume is not possible directly without dataloss. You need to first convert the device into a concatenated meta and then you can convert that into a striped one with data protection. You will need to setup a identical concatenated meta (of type BCV) that is persistently allocated to store the current data in the background the concat to striped conversion is occurring.

Bhaskar1 · Answer

Thanks Cody . So concatenated expansion is possible online . what precautions should we take while performing an expansion in vmax. Is there any document for expansion is Vmax ? Thanks in advance

codyhosterman · Answer

For a VMware-centric view of the process check out the VMware/Symmetrix techbook:

http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/solution-overview/h2529-vmware-esx-svr-w-symmetrix-wp-ldv.pdf

Page 59+ outlines the process. You can also check out the Solutions Enabler Array Control Product Guide or Unisphere documentation for more specific details of the process.

Converting to a concatenated volume from a single device is very quick and is fine to do at essentially any time. Converting to a striped metavolume is a bit of a different story. Depending on the size and available resources on the array the conversion can take some time and somewhat affect I/O to the device so it is best to do this during a low-activity period on the device.

As for choosing concat vs striped concat is easier to convert to and much easier to expand. Striped is a bit more work to configure but improves performance over a concatenated metavolume.

Bhaskar1 · Answer

Also ,  how do we identify if we should use stripe or concatenate expansion in vmax

VMAX

Hyper expansion is possible ?

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