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What are the possibilities to add storage to an existing volume on a W2K server, when no room is available for additional drives?
Hi,
We almost ran out of storage space on one of our Windows 2000 servers (an HP Proliant ML350).
The data is stored on 4 x 146.8 GB drives in RAID5 and the actual available space is 292 GB on one volume and 117 GB on another volume. Currently we only have 4 GB of free space left on the first volume of 292 GB, so we need a storage upgrade as soon as possible. We would like to add apx. 256 GB of usable space, to expand the 292 GB volume.
Along with the main data drives there are 2 x 36.4 GB drives that consist of two volumes: C: of 8 GB and D: of 26 GB. These two volumes hold the OS, some minor applications and some data. We don’t have room left in the server to store additional drives.
Furthermore, the data that is on the 292 GB volume cannot be split up over different volumes.
We are thinking of an external drive cabinet with a usable capacity (on one volume) of at least 500 GB, where we could copy the data of the 292 GB volume to.
Our questions are:
Do you consider this a good solution (or do you know of a better solution)?
How should we employ this and how can we include the new drives in the RAID configuration?
Another thing: in 6 to 8 months we will have implemented a total new server and storage infrastructure, so we are looking for an easy to employ and inexpensive temporary solution!
Thanks for your help!
We almost ran out of storage space on one of our Windows 2000 servers (an HP Proliant ML350).
The data is stored on 4 x 146.8 GB drives in RAID5 and the actual available space is 292 GB on one volume and 117 GB on another volume. Currently we only have 4 GB of free space left on the first volume of 292 GB, so we need a storage upgrade as soon as possible. We would like to add apx. 256 GB of usable space, to expand the 292 GB volume.
Along with the main data drives there are 2 x 36.4 GB drives that consist of two volumes: C: of 8 GB and D: of 26 GB. These two volumes hold the OS, some minor applications and some data. We don’t have room left in the server to store additional drives.
Furthermore, the data that is on the 292 GB volume cannot be split up over different volumes.
We are thinking of an external drive cabinet with a usable capacity (on one volume) of at least 500 GB, where we could copy the data of the 292 GB volume to.
Our questions are:
Do you consider this a good solution (or do you know of a better solution)?
How should we employ this and how can we include the new drives in the RAID configuration?
Another thing: in 6 to 8 months we will have implemented a total new server and storage infrastructure, so we are looking for an easy to employ and inexpensive temporary solution!
Thanks for your help!
Ok, now I see that you are looking for a temporary solution. My idea is more permanent, but could still be used in your new infrastructure as well. As the array is a SCSI configuration, you can use it on any server with the appropriate SCSI card. We use one as a data storage drive for our fileserver and have moved it to different physical servers several times without any problems. The maximum storage spage all depends on how much you want to spend on drives to fill the array, so it pretty much just depends on your budget. I'll post more info when I have it, meanwhile let me know if you have any questions.
-Sloth
-Sloth
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Have you thought about iSCSI?
-Sloth