iDRAC 9 GUI - PERC Virtual Disk Online Capacity Expansion (OCE)

 

I recently got asked in class to explain the method of how to expand a virtual disk using the iDRAC GUI.

In this post I’ll outline the procedure involved.

 

Online Capacity Expansion (OCE) can be done in the following  ways:

• If there is a single virtual disk in a disk group and free space is available. The virtual disk’s capacity can be expanded within that free space.
• If a virtual disk is created and it does not use the maximum size of the disk group, free space is available.
•  A virtual disk's capacity can also be expanded by performing an OCE operation to add more physical disks.

A couple of important points to remember.

Note: The controller changes the write cache policy of all virtual disks undergoing an RLM/OCE to Write-Through until the RLM/OCE is complete. This will therefore impact the Virtual disk performance until the operation is complete

Note: Spanned virtual disks such as RAID 50, and 60 cannot be reconfigured.

We recommend performing a backup before any RAID Reconfiguration.

 

Option 1 – Free Space available

In the example below I have a Raid 1 Disk Group configured which is 1.1TB in size. The virtual disk that resides in the Raid 1 is currently 10GB in size.

To use the remining free space and expand the Virtual disk click on the action drop down menu and select Edit Disk Capacity.

 

 

The menu will display the current capacity of the Virtual disk and how much free space (101.250 GB) is available in the Raid 1.

 

 

 

To increase the virtual disk size, type in the raid capacity you want the Virtual disk to be.

In the example below I increased the capacity from 10GB to 20GB.

Notice the new capacity has changed.

Click apply for the settings to take affect.

 

Click apply now.

 

 

You can check the status of the operation in the Job Queue.

 

 

Once the job completes, we’ll see the new  Virtual disk size.

 

 

Option 2 –  No Free Space available. Expand the raid level by adding a disk.

The second option when no free space is available and the Virtual Disk needs to be expanded, is to add another disk to increase the capacity of the raid level.

In the example below we have a raid 5 to view the member disks click “view physical disks” from the actions drop down menu

 

 

It will list the member disks that make up the raid 5. We can see that there is 3 x 750GB disks which gives us a total capacity of 1.489 TB in the Raid 5.

 

 

Going back to the Virtual disk Tab we see the Virtual Disk is using all the available capacity - 1489.25GB.

 

 

To increase the capacity, we first need to expand the Raid 5 by an additional disk to do so click the “Edit Disk Capacity” option from the actions drop down menu.

 

 

We can see from the “Expand Virtual Disk Capacity” page that there is no free space currently available.

The only option we have is to add another disk to the raid level by clicking the “Add Physical Disk” button.

 

It will list any available disks that can be used.

In the example below we have one disk in the backplane that is currently available.

Tick the box beside “Connector” and click “Add Disks”.

 

Notice the new disk appears, click “Apply” to add it to the raid level.

 

 

Click “Apply Now” to run the job.

 

 

To view the operation, click “Job Queue”.

 

 

Once the job completes,  the capacity of the Virtual disk will be expanded by the total of the newly added disk.

 

 

In the next post we’ll discuss how to reconfigure/change a raid level – stay tuned!