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Kirk J
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Introduction

This guide is to provide example steps on how to non-destructively expand a Virtual Drive (VD) by adding additional physical drives.

Requirements:

  • UCS C series M3 generation server
  • 6Gb LSI raid controller (92xx models with webbios util)
  • Drives being added are same technology (i.e. HDD, SSD, SAS, SATA)
  • Consistent power (power loss during this operation increases likelihood of VD corruption)
  • Existing drives and VDs are healthy.
  • ALWAYS make sure you have valid backups of data before attempting raid volume modifications such as this.

Adding Drives to an existing Virtual Drive

Boot server, hit <CNTRL> <H> during post to get into WebBios Utility

Click on the virtual drive you want to expand, Virtual Drive:0 in this example.

Click 'Adv Opers' operations, and then 'Go'

 

Select 'Change RAID Level and Add Drive'

Leave the RAID level the same unless you are actually wanting to migrate to another valid raid option (i.e. migrating from RAID1 to RAID5).  If you had 2 drives that were in RAID 1, adding 1 more drive wouldn't let you retain RAID1, you would have to choose valid 3 drive option such as RAID5

In the example above, we are adding 2 more drives to an existing 3 drive RAID5 VD.

Click 'Go'

Good time to recall if you actually have valid backups :)

Click 'Yes'

You will now see the Drive Group listed, along with a link to 'VD Progress Info'

Click on the 'VD Progress Info' button.

Notice that the VD drive size information will still reflect the original size until the reconstruction progress is 100% completed.

LSI/Avago/Broadcom megaraid userguide recommends not rebooting while the reconstruction is in progress.  It is best to let the reconstruction process and following background init to finish before exiting the WebBios utility.

In my lab creation for the screen shots above, it took around 1.5 hours to migrate 2 300GB drives in a raid1 to a RAID5 by adding 1 additional 300GB drive.

It then took around 4 hrs to migrate the 3 drive RAID5 VD to a 5 drive RAID5 VD by adding 2 additional 300GB drives.

Comments

Hi Kirk

This is  a very helpful guide to doing this process. I will attempt (after backing up data) and let you know the results,

thanks

Rich

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