"I have a PS5000E (16Disk) SAN running VMWare Enterprise version 4.0. I am a newbie on SAN technology having recently taken over from a previous rapidly departed IT Mgr so apologies for my level of knowledge. I would like to increase the size of one of the volume that the VMs are running on and believe I can do this via the increase volume size on the web interface (after powering off any running VMs of course). Is this correct?

Kind Regards

Paul. "

Yes, you can increase the size of the LUN via EqualLogic's web interface. You really don't have to power off the VMs. EqualLogic will offer to snapshot the LUN before actually expanding the LUN, which is safe enough.

However the VMware host(s) will not automatically see the increased size. You'll have to increase the size by adding extents via the Properties... page for the datastore that you want to expand in Virtual Center.

Hope this helps.

Powerpaul99,

Please review the EqualLogic KB article “INFO: Is it possible to increase the size of my VMFS volume?” first located at:
https://www.equallogic.com/support/solutions.aspx?id=1444 (login required).

Regards,
Joe

Thanks thats really useful

My only point im a little stuck on now is the difference between the LUN and a logical volume. A colleague seems to think that resizing the logical volume via the Equalogic Web interface would not be enough. I would also have to amend the LUN (defined as a set of physical disks) and if this is the case I m not sure where that needs to be done. Any help appreciated

Paul.

Paul,

Let’s see if this clears up your understanding.

When you first setup the array, you create a RAID set policy on the array (i.e., RAID10, or RAID6, etc.). The policy uses all the disks available in the array member so you can have only one RAID policy per member.

Within this RAID set and depending on the EqualLogic model, are constructed 1 or more LUNS (these LUNs are only seen and used by the array OS). Only the array has knowledge of these LUNS.

These LUNs are invisible to the host iSCSI session connecting to a user defined volume created in the PS Array group. The host only sees the volume(s).

Because of this, you do not need to manage the separate LUNs. So, when you need to expand a volume, you first expand the volume in the Group Administration utility, than expand file system as specified by the Host OS

Regards,
Joe

Thanks Joe, that clears up my thinking a lot.

The difficulty for me is that I have inherited the model rather than being able to set it up myself which would have helped my understanding. In that case does the Equalogic PS5000E (the model we have) ship with some array OS software that can be used for the initial out of the box array configuration or do we just purely configure at a higher level with the group admin interface?

"Thanks Joe, that clears up my thinking a lot.

The difficulty for me is that I have inherited the model rather than being able to set it up myself which would have helped my understanding. In that case does the Equalogic PS5000E (the model we have) ship with some array OS software that can be used for the initial out of the box array configuration or do we just purely configure at a higher level with the group admin interface?"

The first time you power on the array after unpacking it, the setup wizard will run and walk you through the setup - IP address, user account, etc. After that, you have an array that you can access via web interface, but completely empty with no RAID policy (and thus no usable space, yet) and no LUN created.

From there, you can log in and set RAID policy (essentially creating usable space) and start creating LUNs and defining access to each LUN.

So, I don't think the wizard would help much.