Adding new drive to LSI 9260 RAID to expand

[redepix]

Does anyone have experience with adding a new drive to an LSI card to expand their RAID? As far as I'm concerned, I'm limited to using only their webbios configuration utility upon boot.

I've read the manual many times through (maybe I missed it?) and I can't seem to get a concrete answer on this topic.

Here is the only bit of information from the manual that seems relevant to what I'm trying to do:

4.15.6 New Drives Attached to a MegaRAID Controller
When you insert a new drive on a MegaRAID system, if the inserted drive does not contain valid DDF metadata, the
drive displays as JBOD. If the drive does contain valid DDF metadata, its drive state is Unconfigured Good.
A new drive in JBOD drive state is exposed to the host operating system as a stand-alone drive. Drives in JBOD drive
state are not part of the RAID configuration because they do not have valid DDF records. The operating system can
install and run anything on JBOD drives.
Automatic rebuilds always occur when the drive slot status changes, for example, when you insert a drive or remove a
drive, so that a hot spare can be used. However, a new drive in JBOD drive state (without a valid DDF record), will not
perform an automatic rebuild.

If my valid drive appears as "Unconfigured Good", would it be possible to simply add the new drive to the existing virtual drive, and do a rebuild (or something along those lines)? Or, is it automatic rebuilds upon adding a new drive to the RAID?

Thanks!

 

[commissarmo]

I use a different LSI card, but presumably its similar enough.

I suppose I'm confused about what you mean by 'Expand'.

It makes sense that if you just throw a disk onto the card, it'll go JBOD, since it's just running that drive like a single SATA drive would be.

It seems you want to add disks to a RAID array you've already created.

I've never done that before (without recreating the entire array), and I'm also curious as to what RAID level you're running?

If it's something like a RAID 0, and you want to stripe across another disk, I imagine that could be difficult to do without recreating the array completely.

If it's something like a RAID 1 or RAID 5, it'll probably be much simpler.

Have you tried the LSI GUI Manager you can get from their website?

 

[redepix]

Yep my intention is to expand an existing array. I'm actually using a RAID 6 array. I am assuming that it is possibly to add a new disk to an existing array with some rebuilding involved. If not that's fine, I could always just reinitialize the array to include the new drive.

I actually have dabbled with the lsi GUI software when I was running on windows server for a bit. However my system now is running a server build Linux distro and don't really have the desire to run the GUI. From what I understand the webbios config utility is supposed to be just as powerful.

Lsi hardware is pretty good. However I wish the documentation was better!

 

[cseeliger]

Yep my intention is to expand an existing array. I'm actually using a RAID 6 array. I am assuming that it is possibly to add a new disk to an existing array with some rebuilding involved. If not that's fine, I could always just reinitialize the array to include the new drive.

I actually have dabbled with the lsi GUI software when I was running on windows server for a bit. However my system now is running a server build Linux distro and don't really have the desire to run the GUI. From what I understand the webbios config utility is supposed to be just as powerful.

Lsi hardware is pretty good. However I wish the documentation was better!

Hi redepix,

did you manage expnding your array? I'm stucked in the same situation wondering if it's possible. It would be great, if you could give me a short hint...

Thanks,
CSE.

 

[redepix]

Hi,

Unfortunately I never did end up figuring that out. I was kinda in a hurry to get this up and running. Instead I simply just added the drives and destroyed all data, so I was starting fresh. Rebuild times would have taken a long time, just to find out if it worked or didn't worked.

If anyone had experience with the original question, that would be good to know.

Thanks!

 

[gonenutsbrb]

Hi,

Unfortunately I never did end up figuring that out. I was kinda in a hurry to get this up and running. Instead I simply just added the drives and destroyed all data, so I was starting fresh. Rebuild times would have taken a long time, just to find out if it worked or didn't worked.

If anyone had experience with the original question, that would be good to know.

Thanks!

This is actually fairly simple to do, but takes some knowledge of the MegaRAID Storage Manager. You do not need to reset the array, but it will have to go through some reconstructing time during which your performance will take a hit, but all your data will still be there and accessible If you still need instructions on how to do this, I can pull up the storage manager on my server at home and walk you through it.

Edit: Nevermind, didn't read all the way to the end. If you want to for just knowledge's sake, I'll be happy to post instructions later.

 

[cseeliger]

Hi,

Unfortunately I never did end up figuring that out. I was kinda in a hurry to get this up and running. Instead I simply just added the drives and destroyed all data, so I was starting fresh. Rebuild times would have taken a long time, just to find out if it worked or didn't worked.

If anyone had experience with the original question, that would be good to know.

Thanks!

This is actually fairly simple to do, but takes some knowledge of the MegaRAID Storage Manager. You do not need to reset the array, but it will have to go through some reconstructing time during which your performance will take a hit, but all your data will still be there and accessible If you still need instructions on how to do this, I can pull up the storage manager on my server at home and walk you through it.

Edit: Nevermind, didn't read all the way to the end. If you want to for just knowledge's sake, I'll be happy to post instructions later.

I would really appretiate your solution, because I still have an array, that probably needs to be extended some day. And after reading all available docu I think, there is no way to do this. At least when you have defined more than one logical drive...

 

[Yitsl Manager]

Hi,

Unfortunately I never did end up figuring that out. I was kinda in a hurry to get this up and running. Instead I simply just added the drives and destroyed all data, so I was starting fresh. Rebuild times would have taken a long time, just to find out if it worked or didn't worked.

If anyone had experience with the original question, that would be good to know.

Thanks!

This is actually fairly simple to do, but takes some knowledge of the MegaRAID Storage Manager. You do not need to reset the array, but it will have to go through some reconstructing time during which your performance will take a hit, but all your data will still be there and accessible If you still need instructions on how to do this, I can pull up the storage manager on my server at home and walk you through it.

Edit: Nevermind, didn't read all the way to the end. If you want to for just knowledge's sake, I'll be happy to post instructions later.

Hi Gonenutsbrb,

Background
MS Server 2012 Essentials installed on a brand new server, Supermicro 2U case with hot swap hard drives bays.
Supplier set up two mirrored arrays, 1 x 500 GB for OS and 1 x 2TB for data. The drives are Seagate Constellations (SATA). As I understand it this card can handle SATA or SAS drives.

I carried out an SBS 2003 to Server 2012 essentials migration, as per MS technet instructions about 10 days ago.
About 5 days ago the 500GB mirror set broke, with the second drive "failing".
I initially assumed the hard drive had failed and ordered a replacement.
When I tried to install the replacement drive using the LSI WebBios utility I got the same error as the original drive.

I have trawled through LSI's large manuals, which appear to be very helpful for creating a new array, but hopelessly inadequate for maintaining / rebuild existing arrays.
What I did find out is the "failed" message relates to a rebuild failure NOT a drive failure.

So, after some searching I downloaded the LSI Server manager software and installed that last night.
I got the same result when I tried to rebuild the mirror to the original drive.
Here are the steps I took (I think) - Insert drive, make config good, rebuild, REBUILD FAILED.

Could you post or e-mail a How-To on getting the mirror set to rebuild?
Even if it's just pointers to steps I've missed would be helpful.

TIA
Bert