Upgrading HDs on an existing node

[Yazan]

Hey guys,

I'm going to be adding a couple more HD's to some of the nodes on my grid. I'm running Dells with dual 5410's that use hot swappable SATA-II HD's and I know I can add the drives without turning off the box, but now my question is, will the grid detect this extra space or will I need to reboot the server for the grid to notice the space?

Is there any way I can do this without rebooting the box and having the grid recognize the new space? Just wondering if anybody has figured this out.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Yazan

[PeterNic]

Yazan,

No, there is no way to do this live. You will actually need to remove the server and re-add it to the grid, which will also remove the volume content from the server.

The suggested procedure for this has been described a few times on the forums and in the docs, but it is essentially:
- make sure all grid volumes are properly repaired ("vol check")
- disable a server you intend to upgrade
- use "vol migrate --all" to move streams off that server
- restart appliances or applications that are running on the server ("server list --map" will give you the layout)
- verify there is nothing running on the target server
- remove the server from the grid using aldo remsrv
- add the drive and reimage the server using ald-reimage -- this will create the necessary volume layout from the disks
- re-add the server using aldo (it will be added enabled)
- repeat for each server you want to upgrade

If this is a development system and you either have backups or the data is not critically important, you can skip the steps of migrating the volumes -- just remove the server from aldo, reimage and re-add. Then repair the broken volumes before moving to the next server.

Just a note on the reasoning: when you reimage the server with aldo, aldo creates a composite volume from all hard drives in the server. As far as I know, it is not possible to add a disk without rebuilding the composite volume -- I'll check with our engineering but even if there is a way to do it, I would not use it for a production system.

We will look at less disruptive disk upgrade options for this in future releases.

Best regards,
-- Peter