Expanding Hard Drive space on Raid 6 Array using Hyper-V

What you suggest is one way - provided the RAID controller allows you to do that.

Another would be to transfer the VMs to a temporary host and then rebuild this one (I'm assuming you're not clustered).

Considering the 72GB disks will be 10 or 15K and the 250GB ones will be 7.2K or slower it'll be a lot slower than before. The 250GB ones may even be SATA and I don't think there is any RAID controller that lets you mix SAS and SATA in the same array.

I just want to expand the hard drive space - even if it is 100GB drives, but I will check tomorrow the models we have but I pretty sure that they are 72GB SAS drives - 8 of them - I just want the best solution - there is no temporary host to transfer the VM's to.

I looked up large 15K SAS Hard Drives and they are available - Seagate has a 600GB 15k SAS drive available - I will have to check whether we have 2.5 or 3.5.

Seagate has Several SAS models including this 606GB Drive -https://www.diskdrivefinder.com/seagate-600gb-15k-rpm-hdd-9fn066-925.html?utm_source=google_shopping&m=simple&gclid=CLqXsJ3UgdQCFc-3wAod0AEN_w

I don't whether you click on that link but you can Google largest SAS 15k hard drives so they are available in SAS.

Maybe I need to contact HP - but my question remains of after I order the 8 hard drives what is the best procedure for expanding the Raid 6 array - Raid 6 allows 2 hard drives to fail and still work so I assume I can add 1 hard drive at a time and let each one rebuild until putting in the next larger hard drive.

After that is done what I the procedure for expanding the hard drive space for the primary Server and the virtual servers - we use Hyper-V and I am sure that I am not the 1st person to expand existing drives with larger ones..

My major concern is with our Virtual Exchange Server is down to 6.5GB of free space out of 100GB. It was 8.5GB just 2 weeks ago. I may need to open a different case regarding that - just let me know .

Therefore my immediate problem is freeing up space on the Exchange Server - Are there logs I can delete?

I have used the Export command with the "DeleteContent" switch and ran it on about 30 stores deleting emails from 2013 until March 1st 2017. It ran through the process deleting old emails from Inbox and Sent Items - Several thousand old emails were removed.

However it did not free up space - in fact space has dropped to 6.5GB from almost 9GB 2 days ago.

I assume that it may have created space available from those deleted emails and maybe some process needs to be run.
I ran the export command as I described above on FRIDAY.

I just checked and we have 7.78GB free space which is up from 6.5GB free space yesterday evening.

My 2 questions remain - freeing up space on a Windows 2007 Exchange Server and adding larger SAS Hard Drives to our Server with 3 Virtual Hard Drives using Hyper-V

Thank you - and I love Experts Exchange because there are a lot of very smart people with in-depth knowledge of various topics.

SFF SAS go up to 1.2TB at the moment. You can swap them one at a time and expand the array and extend the logical disk no problem with Smart Array controllers, just beware of going from less than 2TB to greater than 2TB due to needing GPT for anything over 2TB - you could just create a second logical disk on the extra space anyway.

I do not need 1.2TB or 2 TB drives - I know I can buy SAS drives around 500GB and I understand that I can replace 1 drive at a time and let the Raid Controller using Raid 6 rebuild 1 drive at a time.

Once that is done - I need specific instructions for expanding the hard drive space.

We have the Primary Server running Windows Server 2007 and uses Hyper-V for the Virtual Drives

On the Primary Server (Flash1) "C" Drive is 48GB with 8.51GB Free
"G" Drive contains the Virtual Servers and is 361GB in size with 38.5GB free

Virtual Servers are as follows:

Flash2-C VHD is 19GB
Flash2-F VHD is 90.5GB
Flash3-C is 98.5GB
Flash4-C is 100GB

I want to replace the 72GB 15K SAS Drives with larger 15K SAS Drives - replacing one at a time - letting it build and then insert the 2nd drive, etc.

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1st question - Will Flash1-C and Flash1-G on the Primary Server recognize the larger hard drives or is their a procedure for assigning hard drive space.

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2nd question involves the Virtual Machine Servers - Flash2, Flash3 and Flash4 in Hyper-V

Once completed what is the procedure for expanding the drive space for each of the drives listed above?

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For example Flash3-C contains Exchange Server with 100GB allocated and 6.5GB free - Of course I want to expand that so we do not run out of space.

Can someone provide specific step by step instructions? I Will probably call HP (It's an HP Server) and buy the larger Seagate 15K SAS Hard Drives this week. I will make sure and get 15K SAS drives.

I forgot to add my 3rd question and this question may need to be on a different topic.

He Have Microsoft Exchange Server on Flash3-C which has around 7,5GB of free space on a 100GB drive. It had around 6.5GB yesterday - 2 weeks ago I had 8.5GB Free.

I used the Export command with the DeleteContent  switch and cleared out old email form about 30 of the 100 Mailboxes.

This did not appear to free up space even though large amounts of space should have cleared - or maybe it did - there is around 1GB more space then yesterday, but thought it would provide more space then that.

Is there is procedure that will run or I need to run to free up the space. I do not want to run our of space.

What are my options?

For HP servers, RAID array expansion may be an optional component.

Since RAID 6 is installed, I suspect that RAID expansion may be there.

Open the RAID management software and look around. Right click on the various object in various views to get an idea of what is where.

The simplest thing to do is make sure the backups are good before starting.

Then, pull the first drive and replace it. Monitor the rebuild process in the RAID management console. Rebuild times vary based on the performance of the controller. Higher model number and more cache RAM usually means more performance.

NOTE: Do not change the rebuild rates for the array beyond the defaults to "make the rebuild go faster". Upping the rebuild rate may have a disastrous impact on daily performance.

Once you have changed all the disks for larger ones go into the ACU and you will have option to increase the current logical disk or create another one, don't increase past 2TB.

You may be better asking the Exchange questions in a new question as this isn't even in the Exchange topic area.