I'm running FreeBSD 6.01 on a Dell Poweredge 2650 with five 73GB 15K Maxtor Atlas Drives in a Raid-5 configuration.
Those drives are from 2003 and are starting to flake out. I just ordered five 300GB 15K SCSI Seagate Cheeta's.
I'd like to increase the size of the array minimizing server downtime.
Would the best way to do this be:
1. Replace/wait for rebuild on each drive until all have been replaced
2. Reboot
3. Enter Perc raid configuration
4. Expand array size?
If you have experience with something like this please let me know.
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Quickest to increase data partition is backup and restore after increase the size. For OS partition, you may want to use gparted from Lunix. I have never run FreeBSD, but it should be the same with other Linux. Here is a guide.
http://gparted.sourceforge
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The steps are almost correct except for the last one restore. If you choose to backup and restore, you don't need gparted. You just simply backup, delete the old partition and recreate it with bigger size then restore. If the partition has OS or system file (boot), you may have to use gparted.
Steps if it's a boot partition:
1. Replace/wait for rebuild on each drive until all have been replaced
2. Reboot
3. Enter Perc raid configuration and increase raid container size
4. *Backup current partition externally
5. *Use Gparted and increase partition size
Steps if it's just a data partition:
1. Replace/wait for rebuild on each drive until all have been replaced
2. Reboot
3. Enter Perc raid configuration and increase raid container size
4. *Backup current partition externally
5. *Delete the partion
6. Recreate new partition with additional space
7. Restore data back
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My guess is RAID 1 is for the OS and RAID 5 is your data. Are you planning to rebuild the OS? If not, I suggest to leave it alone. If you prefer to upgrade all disks, you can do that, but it is such a waste to run just OS on a large partition.
Now you need to tell me exactly what is on RAID 5 and RAID 1. Be specific on what partition currently on them and what is your plan for the OS. Do you want to keep it or reinstall from scratch?
Finally, if you want to replace the drive and save your data, you can only swap the drive one at a time and wait for it to rebuild. You have to ensure the rebuild is complete before move on to the next disk.
Otherwise, your data will be deleted.
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by: lnkevinPosted on 2009-02-05 at 13:25:17ID: 23564490
You seem to forget about the partition or files systems that runs FreeBSD 6.01. After you swap out the drives and finish with the rebuild (one after the other), you expand the array size. Doing that, you just add more logical disk space to your RAID container. However, in your OS perspective, you will see the new space as unknown or just free space. You also need to increase partition (file systems) to utilize the new space.
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