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Possible to copy RAID 10 to a new set of HDD and expand RAID?
I have a server set up with RAID10 (hard RAID), right now it has 4x250GB HDD which are too small for me so I am thinking to expand the size of the RAID array by replacing the HDD with xTB of capacity, without having to reinstall the entire machine.
My plan is to have the remote hands to add one xTB HDD at a time, wait for RAID to rebuild, and then add the next one. Once that is done, expand the RAID to occupy the entire xTB of space.
Is it possible to do so? The RAID card I have is HP Smart Array P410 if that matters.
Also if anyone has some HDD to depart and is located in Chicago (ideally at New Continuum facility), please let me know, I don't have a budget yet but willing to pay for reasonable prices for functional HDD (larger capacity the better).
Comments
Another choice is to bring one of each RAID 1 set offline, effectively making it a RAID 0, then plug in 2 new drives, make a new RAID 0, copy the data, then expand the new RAID to 10.
Provided only for reference. Comes with HIGHER risk, but could be done faster than one at a time.
Side note: you should always scrub the drives data before pulling off one.
You talk about remote hands so I assume it's a colocated box. You should purchase a 1tb external drive cheaply on amazon and ship it to the datacenter to plug into the server. using a rented KVM or iDrac or whatever else you have available make an image of the server. Have them pull the drives all out then put in the new, you make a new raid 10 array and then just push the Image to the new array.
This is pretty standard and while it sounds like more steps it won't be it'll be still much faster than what you have in mind. Hopefully your drives are hotswap so you can just have them swap it out quickly without much expense.
That's a good point, may be I should actually just use one of my storage servers to back up the disk image remotely (I am using VMWare so it should be easy for me to back up the VM image). Anyway to copy the entire disk (byte by byte) so that I don't have to deal with the configuration as well?
+1 with @sureiam the issue with the technique is if anything goes wrong data will be at risk. @OP you said you do not want to reinstall server but switching server may be the occasion to renew the hardware and by doing so extend server lifespan.
There are solutions that allows you to make disk image and restore server on another hardware. If you have the time, do some search. R1soft does it for exemple.
The existing hard drives are not wiped till after the recovery is complete. Heck you could wait a year to wipe them. Don't see any data risk. Your just creating an image backup onto an external drive. Putting in the new drives pylon out the old with the data still intact. Creating a new array than pushing the imagine back onto the new array. You don't even have to reinstall the OS
@sureiam sorry for the misunderstanding, i meant spammy's technique is risky.
i think the image method is far better that's why i agreed with you.
@spammy if You have soft raid it rly easy to do.
Fail and replace disks in the array one by one and at the end just make mdadm --grow
p.s
Of course, after each disk replacement, you have to wait for raid rebuild