Adding extra drives to HP DL380 G4

Hi there.
I've been asked to add an extra drive to someone's HP server as they are
running out of drive space.
I've not had chance to have a look at this yet (and indeed haven't worked on
one of these) but I assume that there are spare drive bays in there that can
be used.
If they have the existing drives set up as a RAID5 array , how easy is it to
add the extra drive to that array?
Will this require completely formatting and recreating the array with the
extra drive then restoring everything from a backup or can it be done
without this (though obviously backups are available in case of problems)?

--
Alex

Piece by piece the penguins have taken my sanity
www.drzoidberg.co.uk www.ebayfaq.co.uk

You can check out the HP website
(http://h50025.www5.hp.com/hpcom/au_e...2overview.html) on the
overview, but having recently done the HP Proliant Sever Course myself (and
worked with these machines for a while) they all have the wonderful HP Array
Utilities where you can simply expand the array using the config utility.

The first and primary thing to do is download and install all the latest
firmware releases, which can be done using the Firmware CD (also
downloadable from the HP website) or you can do the online firmware updates
(able to update firmware without resetting) for hardware that's compatible
with that option (BIOS etc may need to be done from the bootable Firmware CD
tho)

After working out the existing array using the utilities, you can simply
power down the server and slot the drive in a spare bay, it will be detected
and become part of the existing array, or you can start a new one (depending
how many drives you add). If you add it to a Raid5 then the server is
configurable to allow you a fast rebuild, or optimised rebuild where it will
rebuild the array when the server load is lower.

Naturally a backup should be taken (Esp if its an SQL server or hosts an SQL
database) just in case, but having worked on a few of these in a development
capacity they've never given me problems with the array configuration
utility.

E.

"Dr Zoidberg" <AlexNOOOO!!!!!!!@drzoidberg.co.uk> wrote in message
news:...
> Hi there.
> I've been asked to add an extra drive to someone's HP server as they are
> running out of drive space.
> I've not had chance to have a look at this yet (and indeed haven't worked
> on one of these) but I assume that there are spare drive bays in there
> that can be used.
> If they have the existing drives set up as a RAID5 array , how easy is it
> to add the extra drive to that array?
> Will this require completely formatting and recreating the array with the
> extra drive then restoring everything from a backup or can it be done
> without this (though obviously backups are available in case of problems)?
>
> --
> Alex
>
> Piece by piece the penguins have taken my sanity
> www.drzoidberg.co.uk www.ebayfaq.co.uk
>

EvilNem wrote:
> You can check out the HP website
> (http://h50025.www5.hp.com/hpcom/au_e...2overview.html) on
> the overview, but having recently done the HP Proliant Sever Course
> myself (and worked with these machines for a while) they all have the
> wonderful HP Array Utilities where you can simply expand the array
> using the config utility.
> The first and primary thing to do is download and install all the
> latest firmware releases, which can be done using the Firmware CD
> (also downloadable from the HP website) or you can do the online
> firmware updates (able to update firmware without resetting) for
> hardware that's compatible with that option (BIOS etc may need to be
> done from the bootable Firmware CD tho)
>
> After working out the existing array using the utilities, you can
> simply power down the server and slot the drive in a spare bay, it
> will be detected and become part of the existing array, or you can
> start a new one (depending how many drives you add). If you add it
> to a Raid5 then the server is configurable to allow you a fast
> rebuild, or optimised rebuild where it will rebuild the array when
> the server load is lower.

Thanks. So the actual downtime shouldn't be too long , but they can expect a
performance hit for a while as it rebuilds.

That's not too much of a problem.

> Naturally a backup should be taken (Esp if its an SQL server or hosts
> an SQL database) just in case, but having worked on a few of these in
> a development capacity they've never given me problems with the array
> configuration utility.
>
Excellent.
--
Alex

Piece by piece the penguins have taken my sanity
www.drzoidberg.co.uk www.ebayfaq.co.uk

Pretty much yes, but, say you do it as they're closing for the day, the RAID
rebuild should be done by the morning so they won't notice any performance
degradation.

"Dr Zoidberg" <AlexNOOOO!!!!!!!@drzoidberg.co.uk> wrote in message
news:...
> EvilNem wrote:
>> You can check out the HP website
>> (http://h50025.www5.hp.com/hpcom/au_e...2overview.html) on
>> the overview, but having recently done the HP Proliant Sever Course
>> myself (and worked with these machines for a while) they all have the
>> wonderful HP Array Utilities where you can simply expand the array
>> using the config utility.
>> The first and primary thing to do is download and install all the
>> latest firmware releases, which can be done using the Firmware CD
>> (also downloadable from the HP website) or you can do the online
>> firmware updates (able to update firmware without resetting) for
>> hardware that's compatible with that option (BIOS etc may need to be
>> done from the bootable Firmware CD tho)
>>
>> After working out the existing array using the utilities, you can
>> simply power down the server and slot the drive in a spare bay, it
>> will be detected and become part of the existing array, or you can
>> start a new one (depending how many drives you add). If you add it
>> to a Raid5 then the server is configurable to allow you a fast
>> rebuild, or optimised rebuild where it will rebuild the array when
>> the server load is lower.
>
> Thanks. So the actual downtime shouldn't be too long , but they can expect
> a performance hit for a while as it rebuilds.
>
> That's not too much of a problem.
>
>> Naturally a backup should be taken (Esp if its an SQL server or hosts
>> an SQL database) just in case, but having worked on a few of these in
>> a development capacity they've never given me problems with the array
>> configuration utility.
>>
> Excellent.
> --
> Alex
>
> Piece by piece the penguins have taken my sanity
> www.drzoidberg.co.uk www.ebayfaq.co.uk
>