Expanding RAID5 guidance - SOLUTION/RESULTS
Frank Warnke
frank at newspapersystems.com
Tue Mar 3 08:53:56 CST 2009
On Mon, 2009-03-02 at 11:40 -0800, Jeff Boyce wrote:
> See posting at bottom.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jeff Boyce" <jboyce at meridianenv.com>
> To: <linux-poweredge at dell.com>
> Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 2:33 PM
> Subject: Expanding RAID5 guidance
>
>
> > Greetings -
> >
> > I am a novice Linux user that manages a file server for a small business
> > and am looking for a little general guidance on understanding the right
> > steps for expanding the storage capacity on a Dell Server. Sorry for the
> > long post, but I know how irritating it is when people don't describe
> > their objective or provide all the details for someone else to understand
> > the problem.
> >
> > Existing Server Setup:
> > Dell PE 2600
> > PERC 4/Di
> > 3 - 36GB hard drives in Raid5
> > 1 - 36GB dedicated hot spare
> > No LVM used
> > RHEL 3 update 9
> > OMSA 5.1
> > Used as small office Samba file server
> >
> > Proposed Objective:
> > Add 2 - 36GB drives in remaining spare slots
> > Expand Raid5 to include the added space
> > Make use of the added space by users of the file server
> >
> > I know the first rule of thumb with managing raids and file systems is to
> > have good backups (multiple backups are better) and I am writing up a
> > detailed list of additional files to backup besides my home and data
> > directories, so I think I have this covered. My second task has been to
> > make sure that I have a rescue disk or reinstallation disks available in
> > case its needed. If OS installation becomes necessary for some reason I
> > am considering upgrading to 5.2 (but that is beside the point).
> >
> > I have read through the OMSA user guide and feel comfortable going through
> > the task to physically install the new drives, and the steps for
> > reconfiguring the existing virtual disk. This point is were my
> > information and comfort level begins to fall apart. The first questions
> > that I would like answered is:
> >
> > 1. How long does the reconfiguration process take (I will do this on a
> > weekend when no one is using the system)?
> > 2. How do I know when the reconfiguration process is done (something the
> > user guide doesn't describe)? As you can see I want to know what to
> > expect (good or bad) prior to completing the reconfiguration.
> >
> > Then from my reading of numerous descriptions of expanding raids through
> > google searches (including a decent summary of the steps written by Matt
> > Domsch (Expanding Storage on Linux-based Servers, Feb. 2003) it appears
> > that I will need to expand the file system to use the new space; but do I
> > also need to add/create a new partition for this space, or can I expand an
> > existing partition into this space. What I would like to do is just
> > expand one or two existing partitions and distribute this space among
> > them, if that is possible (see fstab listed below). So my next questions
> > would be:
> >
> > 3. What are the general steps that I need to do after my raid
> > reconfiguration is complete to achieve my general objective?
> > 4. Would it be possible to add the new space to one or two existing
> > partitions? I am thinking sda2 and sda10 (/ecosystem is our samba share
> > data directory that would be given 90% of the new space).
> > 5. Will I need to add/create a new partition (and samba mount point) to
> > make use of the new space? If so I could reorganize our data files to
> > make use of two samba mount points.
> > 6. Any other pitfalls I should be aware of, such as what steps need to be
> > done on unmounted drives?
> >
> > Thanks for any and all comments and suggestions; good howto links are
> > always welcome.
> >
> > FSTAB
> > -------------------------
> > LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1
> > 1
> > LABEL=/boot /boot ext2 defaults 1
> > 2
> > none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0
> > 0
> > none /proc proc defaults 0
> > 0
> > none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0
> > 0
> > LABEL=/tmp /tmp ext3 defaults 1
> > 2
> > LABEL=/usr /usr ext3 defaults 1
> > 2
> > LABEL=/var /var ext3 defaults 1
> > 2
> > /dev/sda9 swap swap defaults 0
> > 0
> > /dev/sda2 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
> > /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660
> > noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
> > /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu
> > 0 0
> > /dev/st0 /mnt/tape ext3 noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
> > /dev/sda10 /ecosystem ext3 defaults 1 2
> >
> > RECENT LOGWATCH OUTPUT
> > ------------------ Disk Space --------------------
> > Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> > /dev/sda7 2.0G 1.5G 385M 80% /
> > /dev/sda3 190M 54M 128M 30% /boot
> > none 501M 0 501M 0% /dev/shm
> > /dev/sda8 1012M 33M 928M 4% /tmp
> > /dev/sda5 9.7G 2.8G 6.4G 31% /usr
> > /dev/sda6 9.7G 2.9G 6.3G 32% /var
> > /dev/sda2 2.5G 2.0G 443M 82% /home
> > /dev/sda10 40G 35G 3.7G 91% /ecosystem
> >
> >
> > Jeff Boyce
> > www.meridianenv.com
>
> I finally had my scheduled maintenance down time and completed this task. I
> thought I would share generally what I did and how I did it in case there
> are other novice administrators out there interested.
>
> 1. Ran my normal tape backup on the Friday night before the down weekend to
> backup all data files.
> 2. Rebooted the system to verify it shuts down and restarts properly.
> System had been up 450+ days so this initiated a file system check which was
> also my plan.
> 3. Modified my /etc/fstab so that I could mount a usb flash drive and a usb
> connected portable hard drive.
> 4. Copied some specific rpm's and system files to the flash drive.
> 5. Installed GParted LiveCD and rebooted so that the drives were not
> mounted.
> 6. Made an image of the server onto the usb connected portable hard drive.
> In case something goes very wrong in subsequent steps.
> # dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=8192 conv=noerror,sync
> This does not give any progress report to indicate how long it would
> take so I opened another terminal and ran the following command to force the
> dd command to give me a periodic status report.
> # watch -n120 -- pkill -USR1 ^dd$
> Since the usb transfer rate was 1.1 MB/sec it took about 18 hours to
> transfer about 70 GB.
> 7. Unmounted the usb portable drive, shut down GParted, and powered down
> the server.
> 8. Vacuumed all the dust from the server and installed the two new hard
> drives in my last open slots.
> 9. Rebooted the system in the standard OS in order to use OMSA tools.
> 10. In OMSA selected the Virtual Disk, chose the reconfigure task, and
> selected execute to step through the steps to select the new physical disks
> to include in the virtual disk, the raid type, and the size for the
> reconfigured virtual disk.
> 11. OMSA gives a progress report during the reconfiguration process. It
> took about 1 hour and 10 minutes to complete reconfiguring a 3 disk raid 5
> of 67GB to a 5 disk raid 5 of 135GB.
> 12. Reboot the server using the GParted LiveCD so that the drives were not
> mounted.
> 13. My goal was to just expand my existing last partition (sda10) into the
> new space. However I realized that I had to expand my existing "extended
> partition" (sda4) first to include the new space, then expand the last
> partition (sda10) and grow the filesystem into the space.
> 14. Remove the GParted LiveCD and rebooted to the standard OS.
> 15. Checked OMSA Virtual Disk and it indicated that it was conducting a
> background initialization, which took about 1 hour to complete.
> 16. Checked the new size of the Samba share (sda10) on a Windows client box
> and everything looked good.
>
> When I returned to the office on Monday morning the staff was working on the
> Samba share without even noticing anything had changed. I am glad no one
> noticed the change. Success goes unnoticed by normal users, failure gets
> noticed. I would like to thank everyone that educated me and gave me
> guidance (both on- an off-list) on how to complete this task and what to
> expect. And I hope now that some other novice might learn from my
> description.
>
> Jeff Boyce
> www.meridianenv.com
>
Very good information.
FWIW, I have done similar tasks and for steps 5 - 7 I have used G4L
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l). It is a live Linux CD that you
can boot from. G4L will compress the dd image to a USB drive, FTP
server, or another drive in the system and it gives a status of its
progress. I have not booted G4L from a Dell server in some time, so I
don't know for sure what support it may have for the latest Dell PERC's.
Thanks,
Frank
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