Megaraid Storage Manage (MSM) Online Capacity Expansion: How?

[Stereodude]

So I have an IBM ServeRAID M5016 which is equivalent to an LSI 9265-8i with 1gB CacheVault. I've got the 15.03.01.00 MSM installed. Right now I have a 6x6TB RAID-6 array. I have two more 6TB drives I want to add to the array. Based on my Googling I should be able to right click on the virtual drive in the Logical tab and pick "Advanced Operations" and then Reconstruction Wizard. There's just one problem, there is no Advanced Operations option.

Should the option be there? Do I need to do something to enable the Advanced Operations menu? Does this card not support OCE? (IBM/Lenovo's product page says it does) Is there another way to do it from the GUI? Should I be using the command line instead?

Yes, I know OCE isn't the greatest thing in the world. I intentionally want to try it to see how long it takes, how it works, etc. before I put this NAS/server into use. Basically a test run...

 

[Stereodude]

Okay, so it looks like the StorCLI migrate command is what I want to use.

The PDF manual says:
storcli /cx/vx start migrate <type=raidlevel> [option=<add | remove> disk=<e1:s1,e2:s2 ...> ]

has this input example:
storcli /c0/v3 start migrate type=r5 option=add disk=e5:s2,e5:s3

My problem is all of my drives have the same enclosure and slot number, so that's presumably insufficient (haven't tried it).

StorCLI64.exe /c0 /eall /sall show

Drive Information :
=================

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
EID:Slt DID State DG  Size Intf Med SED PI SeSz Model  Sp
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
16:0  17 Onln   0 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
16:0  18 Onln   0 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
16:0  19 Onln   0 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
16:0  20 Onln   0 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
16:0  21 Onln   0 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
16:0  22 Onln   0 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
16:0  23 UGood  - 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
16:0  24 UGood  - 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The help from StorCLI says something slightly different:

storcli /cx/vx start migrate type=raidx [option=add|remove drives=[e:]s|[e:]s-x|[e:]s-x,y] [Force]

disk in the PDF manual is actually drives. I know e is the enclosure ID, and s is the slot, but I don't know what s-x or s-x,y denote or how I can use them to identify the two drives I want to add.

 

[Stereodude]

Thanks to someone at STH I now know how to do it from the GUI. You have to right click on the Drive Group two levels up, not the virtual drive. Then you pick Modify Drive Group and go from there. It gave me an estimate of 5 Days 2 Hours 50 Minutes for the operation. I'm attempting to benchmark the drive speed during the rebuild, but I can already tell it's SUPER slow.

Edit: Benchmark:

 

[nicolas9510]

well of course it will be slow during the rebuild.
i dont know why on earth you would want to bench the array while a rebuild is in process lol.

 

[Stereodude]

well of course it will be slow during the rebuild.
i dont know why on earth you would want to bench the array while a rebuild is in process lol.

Because I'm trying to determine just how usable the array is or isn't while it's reconstructing. If it takes 5 days and you effectively can't use the array while it's reconstructing, IMHO there's not much benefit to OCE. I guess the main benefit would be if you can't copy data quickly from your backup. In way less than 5 days I can do a full init on a new array (~12 hours with these 6TB drives) and copy all the data from a backup server over 10GbE.

 

[nicolas9510]

good point. never thought of the time to OCE vs re-init.
that 10gbe will definitely make it smoother and quicker

 

[izx]

IMHO there's not much benefit to OCE.

True, unless you don't have a full backup.

I haven't tried OCE with LSI, but from my experience with Areca, "offline cap. exp." (i.e. initiate from BIOS and leave it there) is significantly faster compared to true OCE from within Windows. Still not as fast as a re-init and restore, of course.

 

[Stereodude]

True, unless you don't have a full backup.

In which case you're putting your data at risk since an OCE is about the worst case scenario for a drive deployed at home in terms of wear / stress.

I haven't tried OCE with LSI, but from my experience with Areca, "offline cap. exp." (i.e. initiate from BIOS and leave it there) is significantly faster compared to true OCE from within Windows. Still not as fast as a re-init and restore, of course.

What difference would that make? If Windows doesn't access the drive it should be the same speed unless it also uses the system RAM at the BIOS level to work in larger increments.

 

[izx]

What difference would that make? If Windows doesn't access the drive it should be the same speed unless it also uses the system RAM at the BIOS level to work in larger increments.

It shouldn't in theory, but it did (at least on the older 12xx & 1680 cards). Perhaps the firmware knows that it has an exclusive lock in BIOS mode and goes faster?

Anyway, as of the latest 1883s, I tried an online (background) init in Windows, estimated at days. FWIW, rebooting and going into the OPROM didn't make it go any faster

IMHO, OCE is mostly a gimmick, but for someone who can only have a partial (critical) backup, it exists. Unlikely for us home folks, but some may have full backups off-site or in cold storage.

If the plan was to upgrade slowly, say a new HDD a month, my preference would be to max out a RAID-6 to whatever number of disks you're comfortable with and then do in-place rebuilds with each new drive.