Online RAID Capacity Expansion & RAID Level Migration

The Challenge of Modern Business
The biggest challenge facing the modern business today is to select and set up a truly reliable network-attached storage server to save and share important data securely and to increase the work efficiency of different departments. Meanwhile, it is also important to set up a reliable backup policy to reduce the risk of data loss.

QNAP TS-409 series provide a high performance data center and a real low TCO (total cost of ownership) solution for modern business. In addition to the complete specification, easy-to-use applications, TS-409 series offer innovative and dominant features: Hot-swap hard drive design with Online RAID Capacity Expansion and Online RAID Level Migration. In the past, only few corporate have budgets for the advanced functions. QNAP has successfully implemented these powerful features in TS-409 series and designed more convenient operation procedure to enable business users to enjoy these functions in simpler steps.

This application note demonstrates different scenarios (take NAS user Jeffrey for example) and the steps to use the powerful Online RAID Capacity Expansion and Online RAID Level Migration, and how the user benefits from the powerful expansion function.

Case 1: Online RAID Capacity Expansion

• Jeffrey invested four 250GB hard drives for initial setup of TS-409 Pro and configured RAID 5 disk configuration with the four drives.
• A half year later, the data size of the department has largely increased to 1.5 TB. In other words, the storage capacity of TS-409 Pro is running out of use. At the same time, the price of 1TB hard drives has dropped to a large extent.

Online RAID Capacity Expansion enables users to expand the storage capacity of RAID without turning off the server. Jeffrey can expand the current logical volume of RAID 5 from 750GB storage capacity to 3TB.

1. Execute the RAID Expansion function. Replace the 250GB hard drives with 1TB ones step by step.
2. Then expand the capacity of the logical volume.

Operation procedure:
Step 1
In Device Configuration/ RAID Management tool page, select the drive volume for expansion and click Expand capacity.

Step 2
Click [Replace] for the first hard drive to be replaced. Follow the instructions to proceed.

Tips: After replacing the hard drives, the description field shows the message "You can replace this drive". This means you can replace the hard drive to a larger one or skip this step if the hard drives have been replaced already.
Caution: When the hard drive synchronization is in process, do NOT turn off the NAS or plug/ unplug the hard drives.

Step 3
When the description displays "Please remove this drive", remove the hard drive from the NAS. Wait for the NAS to beep twice after removing the hard drive.

Step 4
When the description displays "Please insert the new drive", insert the new drive to the drive slot.

Step 5
After inserting the hard drive, wait for the NAS to beep. The system starts rebuilding.

Step 6
After rebuilding finishes, follow steps 2-5 to replace other hard drive(s).

Step 7
After changing the hard drives and rebuilding completes, you can click [Expand capacity] to execute RAID expansion.

Click OK to proceed.

The NAS beeps and starts to expand the capacity.

Step 8
The process may take from hours to tens of hours to finish depending on the drive size. Please wait patiently for the process to finish. Do NOT turn off the power of NAS.

Step 9
After RAID expansion is finished, the new capacity is shown and the status is Ready. You can start to use the larger capacity. (In the example you got 3TB logical volume)

Tips: The description still shows "You can replace this hard drive". If the drive volume is Ready, you can perform RAID expansion.

Case 2: Online RAID Level Migration

• During the initial setup of TS-409 Pro, Jeffrey invested a 1TB hard drive and configured it as Single Disk mode. The TS-409 Pro is used as a file server for data sharing among the department.
• After a half year, more and more important data are saved on TS-409 Pro. There is a rising concern for hard drive crash and data loss. Therefore, Jeffrey planned to upgrade the disk configuration to RAID 5.

Online RAID Level Migration enables users to install one hard drive for setting up TS-409 Pro and migrate the RAID redundancy level in the future to increase data protection. The migration process can be done without turning off the server. All the original data retained.

1. Prepare hard drives of the same or larger capacity as an existing drive in the RAID configuration.
2. Execute RAID Migration (Migrate the system from Single Disk mode to RAID 5 with 4 hard drives)

Step 1
Go to Device Configuration/ SATA Disk page. The current disk volume configuration displayed on the page is Single Disk (the capacity is 1TB).

Step 2
Insert the new hard drives of 1TB capacity to drive slots 2, 3, and 4 of NAS. The NAS system will detect the new hard disks. The status of the new disks is "Unmounted".

Step 3
In Device Configuration/ RAID Management Tool page, select the drive configuration for migration and click Migrate to proceed.

Step 4
Select one or more available drives and the migration method. The drive capacity after migration is shown. Click Migrate to proceed.

Note that all the data on the selected drives will be cleared. Click OK to confirm.

Step 5
When migration is in process, the required time and total drive capacity after migration are shown in the description field.

Please note: The NAS system will enter "read only" mode when the migration is in process during 11%~49% to assure the data of RAID configuration will be consistent after the RAID migration completes.

Step 6
After migration completes, the new drive configuration is shown (RAID 5 now) and the status is Ready. You can start to use the new drive configuration.

The process may take from hours to tens of hours to finish depending on the drive size. You can connect to the web page of NAS to check the status later.

Case 3: Use Online RAID Capacity Expansion and Online RAID Level Migration together

• Jeffrey had a tight schedule to set up the file server and FTP server. However, he had only one 250GB hard drive. Therefore, he set up the TS-409 Pro with the Single Disk configuration.
• The original plan was to set up a 3TB RAID 5 network data center with TS-409 Pro.
• Jeffrey now planned to migrate the disk configuration of TS-409 Pro to RAID 5 and expand the total storage capacity to 3TB with all the original data retained after the hard drives are purchased.

1. Execute Online RAID Level Migration to migrate the system from Single Disk to RAID 5. The total storage capacity will be 750GB of RAID 5. (With one 250GB drive and three 1TB drives, the disk usage will be 250GB*4 for RAID 5.)
   PS: You can refer to the Case 2 for detailed operation procedure.
2. Execute Online RAID Capacity Expansion, to replace the 250GB drive with a new 1TB drive, and then expand the logical volume from 750GB to 3TB of RAID 5.
   PS: You can refer to the Case 1 for detailed operation procedure.

Conclusion
TS-409 series enable users to expand the RAID capacity with the increasing demands for data storage, and also migrate the RAID level for advanced data redundancy in an easy way! Furthermore, with the interactive installation utility and web-based user interface, administrators can configure the disk configuration, user settings, and access control easily. The comprehensive log system, e-mail alerts settings minimize the maintenance cost. TS-409 series integrate powerful features, including Printer Server, FTP server, File Server, automatic backup software, and encrypted Remote Replication to provide a wide range of applications. It is no doubt a perfect data storage solution for present and future.