Dell Unity: How to expand a Unity pool using the CLI
Summary: What are the options to expand a Dell Unity pool outside of the user interface (UI)?
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Instructions
Issue: Unable to expand a pool from the UI.
1. Check the status of the pool and get the drive and RAID group information:
uemcli /stor/config/pool -name <pool_name> show -detail
Example:
14:11:25 service@xyz spb:~/user> uemcli /stor/config/pool -name XYZ123 show -detail
1: ID = pool_3
Type = Dynamic
Name = March2025
Description =
Total space = 3815810007040 (3.4T)
Current allocation = 20392058880 (18.9G)
Preallocated = 11551760384 (10.7G)
Remaining space = 3783866187776 (3.4T)
Subscription = 1182995120128 (1.0T)
Flash percent = 39%
Subscription percent = 31%
Alert threshold = 70%
Drives = 6 x 600.0G SAS; 6 x 400.0G SAS Flash 3
Number of drives = 12
RAID level = 5
Stripe length = 5
Rebalancing = no
Rebalancing progress =
Health state = Degraded/Warning (10)
Health details = "This storage pool exceeds the critical capacity threshold. Thin-provisioned resources may suffer data loss or become unavailable when the pool reaches full capacity. Snapshots may become invalid and replication sessions may stop synchronizing for storage resources provisioned in this pool. To allocate more storage space, add more disks to your system. (https://10.120.162.226/help/webhelp/en_US/index.html?#unity_c_storage_pool_at_or_near_full_capacity.html)"2. Insert drives according to the requirement. Check the RAID Group and insert drives to expand the pool as required.
3. Check whether the drives are online with these commands:
fbecli.exe
pdo
These commands display the number of drives and the status of the drives which are online. Match this output against the above output to determine if the
pdo output has more drives than the pool.
4. Check the Disk Group which contains the unconfigured drives with this command:
uemcli /stor/config/dg -traditional show
This command shows the disk group which contains the unconfigured drives.
Example:
1: ID = dg_28
Drive type = SAS Flash 3
FAST Cache = no
Drive size = 1575700986880 (1.4T)
Vendor size = 1.6T
Rotational speed = 0 rpm
Number of drives = 43
Unconfigured drives = 7
Capacity = 67755142435840 (61.6T)
Recommended number of spares = 2- Check the Profile where the drives are to be added with this command:
uemcli /stor/config/profile -traditional -configurable show
This command displays the profile in which the drives are to be added to expand the pool according to the RAID group. Also, check the disk group which belongs to this profile.
Example:
Example:
1: ID = tprofile_1
Type = Traditional
Description = SAS Flash RAID5 (4+1)
Drive type = SAS Flash
RAID level = 5
Maximum capacity = 7878504934400 (7.1T)
Stripe length = 5
Disk group = dg_28
Maximum drives to configure = 5
Maximum capacity to configure = 6302669729792 (5.7T)
- Run uemcli command to expand the pool:
uemcli -d 10.0.0.0 -u admin -p 'MyPassword123!' /stor/config/pool -id pool_1 extend -diskGroup dg_28 -drivesNumber 5 -storProfile tprofile_1
For the above example, the Disk group is
dg_28, the profile is tprofile_1, the id of the pool to be expanded is pool_1, and the number of drives to expand the pool is 5 according to RAID Group.
After the command gives the output as
"Operation completed successfully.", check the number of drives and the pool status again by using Step 1.
Example:
15:12:26 root@xyz spb:/cores/service/user> uemcli /stor/config/pool show -detail
Storage system address: 127.0.0.1
Storage system port: 443
HTTPS connection
1: ID = pool_1
Type = Traditional
Name = File and VMware Production Pool
Description = Default production pool
Total space = 55718073860096 (50.6T)
Current allocation = 47159708909568 (42.8T)
Preallocated = 97010941952 (90.3G)
Remaining space = 8461354008576 (7.6T)
Subscription = 66559913492480 (60.5T)
Subscription percent = 119%
Alert threshold = 70%
Drives = 41 x 1.6T SAS Flash 3
Number of drives = 41
RAID level = 5
Stripe length = Mixed
Rebalancing = yes
Rebalancing progress = 0%
Health state = OK_BUT (7)
Health details = "This storage pool has exceeded the capacity threshold you specified. To allocate more storage space, add additional disks to your system. (https://10.120.162.226/help/webhelp/en_US/index.html?#unity_c_storage_pool_at_or_near_full_capacity.html)"
Protection size used = 0
Non-base size used = 0
Auto-delete state = Idle
Auto-delete paused = no
Auto-delete pool full threshold enabled = yes
Auto-delete pool full high water mark = 95%
Auto-delete pool full low water mark = 85%
Auto-delete snapshot space used threshold enabled = no
Auto-delete snapshot space used high water mark = 25%
Auto-delete snapshot space used low water mark = 20%
Compression space saved = 2968627707904 (2.6T)
Compression Percent = 6%
Compression Ratio = 1.1:1
Data Reduction space saved = 2968627707904 (2.6T)
Data Reduction Percent = 6%
Data Reduction Ratio = 1.1:1
All flash pool = yesAffected Products
Dell EMC Unity Family |Dell EMC Unity All FlashProducts
Dell EMC Unity Family |Dell EMC Unity All Flash, Dell EMC Unity FamilyArticle Properties
Article Number: 000020429
Article Type: How To
Last Modified: 12 Nov 2025
Version: 6
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