MD3220 migrate virtual disk to new disk group using virtual disk copy?

Question

We have an MD3220 with a single disk group (22 disk RAID10) that holds multiple virtual disks for a SQL cluster. We would like to chain an MD1220 off the MD3220 and create a second disk group and, if possible, migrate some of the VD's off the 3220 to the 1220. The tech guidebook for the MD3200 series claims it is possible via the "Virtual Disk Copy" licensed feature:

"Additionally, virtual disk copy can be used to redistribute data – moving virtual disks from older, slower disk physical disks to newer, faster, or higher capacity physical disks – to optimize application performance and/or capacity utilization."

But the big question is whether this can be done behind the scenes so the host/cluster has no idea the disk/lun has moved. We do this all the time on our other vendor arrays and it would eliminate a ton of work if it is possible on the MD3220.

Thanks.

DELL-Kenny K · Accepted Answer

Yes that is possible. A Virtual Disk Copy will create a bit for bit copy of an existing virtual disk so you would need to ensure that the space is available. However you would need to make sure that you also stop the I/O when making the copy.

Once it is done, you remove the host to virtual disk mapping from the original, and create a host to virtual disk mapping to the newly created one. As far as behind the scenes yes on the mapping part but you should still stop the data access when you remove and re-add the host to VD mapping.

Noogz · Answer

Thank you for the response.  Unfortunately that may not work for us as I was hoping this could all be an online migration completely transparent to a running host/cluster.

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MD3220 migrate virtual disk to new disk group using virtual disk copy?

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