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Dell PowerVault ME5 Series Storage System CLI Reference Guide

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expand disk-group

Description Adds disks to a disk group to expand its storage capacity.

This command applies to linear disk groups using any RAID level except NRAID and RAID 1. This command applies to virtual disk groups using ADAPT.

The new disks must be the same type as disks already in the disk group, and must be in the same tier as the disk group.

The new disks need not have consistent capacity. ADAPT algorithms will attempt to use the maximum possible space on each disk in the group. However, some capacity will be unusable. How much depends on the number of disks in the group and the size difference between the disks:

  • Disk groups with few disks (such as 12 disks) won't effectively use the capacity of all the disks if they are different sizes. For example, a group composed of eleven 2TB disks and one 1TB disk will have a usable capacity closer to 12TB than 24TB.
  • Disk groups with a large number of disks can handle different size disks with much more effective use of capacity.
NOTE:A disk group can contain a mix of 512-byte native sector size (512n) disks and 512-byte emulated sector size (512e) disks. For consistent and predictable performance, do not mix disks of different sector size types (512n, 512e).

The expansion capability for each supported RAID level is:

RAID level Expansion capability Maximum disks
NRAID Cannot expand. 1
0 Can add 1–4 disks at a time. 16
1 Cannot expand (linear storage). 2
5 Can add 1–4 disks at a time 16
6 Can add 1–4 disks at a time. 16
10 Can add 2 or 4 disks at a time (linear storage). 16
ADAPT Can add up to 68 disks at a time. 128
When disks are added to an ADAPT disk group, the system will first replenish any spare capacity needed to be fully fault-tolerant, then use the remainder or expansion of user data capacity.
  • When set to the default spare capacity, the system will try to replenish spare capacity to be the sum of the two largest disks in the group.
  • When default spare capacity has been overridden (via the set disk-group adapt-target-spare-capacity parameter), the system will try to replenish spare capacity to meet the configured target GiB.
  • If the actual spare capacity meets the target spare capacity, the new disk capacity will be allocated to user data.
NOTE: If you want to make spare capacity changes, do so by using the set disk-group command before starting disk-group expansion.
NOTE:

Expansion of a non-ADAPT disk group can take hours or days to complete, depending on the disk group's RAID level and size, disk speed, utility priority, and other processes running on the storage system. You can stop expansion only by deleting the disk group.

For ADAPT disk groups, expansion is very fast and extra capacity is immediately available when rebalancing is not needed. If rebalancing is needed, extra capacity may not be available until rebalancing is complete.

Before starting the expansion, ensure no other utilities are running on the disk group. If another operation is in progress, the expansion cannot start.

Minimum role standard
Syntax expand disk-group

disks <disks>

[prompt yes|no]

<disk-group>

Parameters disks <disks>

The IDs of the disks to add. For disk syntax, see Command syntax.

prompt yes|no

Optional. For scripting, this specifies an automatic reply to confirmation prompts:

  • yes: Allow the command to proceed.
  • no: Cancel the command
If this parameter is omitted, you must manually reply to prompts.

<disk-group>

The name or serial number of the disk group to expand. A name that includes a space must be enclosed in double quotes.

Examples Expand disk group DG1 to include disk 1.11.

# expand disk-group disks 1.11 DG1

Expand a RAID-10 disk group named R10 to include an additional mirror pair.

# expand disk-group disks 2.9-10 R10

Add 10 disks to ADAPT disk group Data3.

# expand disk-group disks 1.1-10 Data3

See also

set disk-group (to set spare capacity before expansion)

show disk-groups

show disks

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