How do I replace a hard drive with a larger capacity in an HA cluster?

Applicable Products

• QuTS hero h5.3.0 or later
• High Availability Manager
• Storage Manager

Scenario

You have deployed a high-availability (HA) cluster with shared storage, and a current storage pool is running low on capacity. The system may have issued a warning about low storage space.

To accommodate growing data or performance requirements, you need to expand the storage pool. Since your system is in an HA environment, any modification to shared storage must be handled carefully to avoid service interruption or triggering failover.

Solution

You can replace disks one by one. Follow these steps:

1. Identify the RAID group in the storage pool you want to expand.
   1. Go to Storage Manager > Storage Space.
   2. Identify the storage pool to expand.
   3. Under Action, click  > Manage, and then go to the RAID tab.
      Storage Manager displays the RAID groups in the storage pool, and the disks used by each RAID group.
2. Verify that the RAID group's RAID type is RAID 1, 5, or 6.
   Note

   Only these RAID types currently support expansion by replacing disks one by one.
3. Disable all spare disks assigned to the RAID group.
   1. Go to Storage Manager > Disks > Disk.
   2. Identify the spare disk.
   3. Under Action, click  > Disable Spare.
4. Note down all disk slots used by the RAID group.
   Tip

   To check the disk slots used by the RAID group, go back to Storage Manager > Storage Space, identify the storage pool, click  > Manage, and then go to the RAID tab.
5. On the passive node, replace the disks one at a time.
   1. Replace an existing disk with a new disk that has a greater capacity.
      Important

      Do not replace more than one disk at a time.
   2. Wait for the system to rebuild the RAID group and the storage pool.
      Tip

      You can monitor the rebuild process in Storage Manager or High Availability Manager.
   3. Once the rebuild process is done, verify that both the disk's and pool's statuses are healthy.
      You can check the disk status in Storage Manager > Disks > Disk, and the pool status in Storage Manager > Storage Space.
   4. Repeat the previous steps until all disks have been replaced.
6. On the active node, replace the disks one at a time.
   Follow the same steps for replacing the disks on the passive node.
   Important

   Ensure the capacity of the disk in each disk slot on the active node matches that of the corresponding disk slot on the passive node.
7. After successfully replacing all disks in the RAID group on both nodes, check the storage pool capacity in Storage Manager.
   Once the total capacity of the storage pool is updated, the expansion is complete.

Further Reading

How do I expand a storage pool in an HA cluster?