How to add another disk to hard RAID 5 in SLES 9

yang_wayne · 02-02-2009, 01:42 PM

I have hp ProLiant DL380. Currently, it has 3 disks (ultra 320 SCSI 36.4G) with total 69G hard drive. I want to add another disk (36.4G) to the RAID and make the new drive merge to the old one.

I have searched. The way to add new hard drive is:
fdisk or yast to partition new hard drive;
mkfs new hard drive
mount new hard drive to tmp_opt mount, copy my /opt to tmp directory, mount new hard drive to /opt, edit /etc/fstab

I have two questions:
1. How to add new disk to the RAID?
2. Will the new drive merged with old drive?

How about If i am not able to copy all files to tmp_opt?

Thanks,

Lisa

Tinkster · 02-02-2009, 04:13 PM

Hi,

I assume that by "hard raid" you mean a RAID where the SCSI disks
are attached to an actual RAID controller that does the RAIDing
using it's firmware and some sort of processor on the board?

Cheers,
Tink

yang_wayne · 02-02-2009, 08:38 PM

Yes. And I don't understand why after mount, should copy /opt to tmp_opt

Tinkster · 02-02-2009, 09:05 PM

I'm confused where you get the idea of individually mounting the
new drive from. The normal process for a hardware raid would be
that the controller BIOS is used to add the device to a RAID-group,
and then you'd most likely want to increase the LVM and file-system.

Mounting the disk separately seems very wrong if you want to increase
the size of your RAID.

yang_wayne · 02-03-2009, 08:48 AM

I read this article about how to add new drive:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-drive-109305/

I have no experience about adding new device to RAID group. How to use controller BIOS to add new device? After new device (or drive) added, should I partitioning the new drive?

So what is the steps for the whold process?

Thanks for the help.

Tinkster · 02-03-2009, 10:14 AM

OK, that's a perfectly fine method for people w/o a
RAID controller. As for the HOW in your case - that
will largely depend on the brand & model of your
controller, and whether the vendor has supplied tools
that allow you to grow the RAID from a running OS or
not. In no case should you need to partition anything
manually - that's what the controller will take care
of by adding the device to a raid-set.

I'd recommend reading the manual for your controller,
this is not really a Linux-question ... if HP (assuming
the controller is HP branded) provide software for your
controller read its documentation.

Cheers,
Tink

yang_wayne · 02-03-2009, 12:32 PM

Read something about this:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ackage-443406/

"No, that's not possible. The code to be able to expand a raid5 has been finalized March 17th, 2006 and will be included in the upcoming 2.6.17 release of the linux kernel. (2.6.17rc3-mm1 is already available and contains the code.)

I doubt webmin will include this functionality any time soon (if ever). So you would need to update your kernel (and possibly mdadm), then expand the raid and after that expand the filesystem. Both the last steps are highly critical and I wouldn't go anywhere near this unless you have a full backup of the data."

It seems not that easy. Could someone has first hand experience give me some advice? Thanks

Tinkster · 02-03-2009, 01:33 PM

*sigh*

How did webmin get into the picture? The thread is talking about a software
RAID, which has nothing to do with your situation. Did you check on controller
type and its documentation?

Even to get first hand statements from others they'll need to know
the type of your controller ...

Cheers,
Tink

yang_wayne · 02-06-2009, 09:48 AM

I found HP ProLiant Essentials Foundation Pack, with HP SmartStart, which can help server management and array controller configuration. I read the documentation, but it only has the method to install PSPs(Linux ProLiant Support Pack) for Linux. After installation, I have no idea how to use it. I have no experience on software or hardward RAID array set up.

Please help me. Thanks.