Moving MegaRAID SAS 9271-8i card RAID5 to different drives

[iscariot.tf]

My current RAID configuration is six 3tb HDD on the SAS 9271-8i card above.  I'd like to move the raid to three 10tb HDD.  What is the best way to do this?  Could I just remove one of the 3tb drives and then plug in all three 10tb drives and make a new logical drive?

[leadeater]

Shrinking an array, physical disks, is really not recommended and not worth the hassle to achieve it or the risk in doing it. It's best to create a new array and logical volume and copy the data across from your existing array.

[iscariot.tf]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

Shrinking an array, physical disks, is really not recommended and not worth the hassle to achieve it or the risk in doing it. It's best to create a new array and logical volume and copy the data across from your existing array.

I see.  I will have to do that then.  What is the best method to copy across?  I don't have enough open slots in the backplane to plug in three new drives.  Can I use a drive an an intermediary and copy to it and then to the new array?  Of the space I have, I'm only using about 1/3 of it.  

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, iscariot.tf said:

I see.  I will have to do that then.  What is the best method to copy across?  I don't have enough open slots in the backplane to plug in three new drives.  Can I use a drive an an intermediary and copy to it and then to the new array?  Of the space I have, I'm only using about 1/3 of it.  

Your RAID card supports "Online RAID Level Migration" so you can create a RAID 1 with two of your 10TB HDDs (assuming you have 2 slots free), copy that data across, remove the 3x 3TB disks without deleting the array, insert the third 10TB HDD and Online Migrate the RAID level from RAID 1 to RAID 5.

 

If you don't have two slots free create a one disk RAID 0 array and do similar above.

 

I would recommend first however that you shutdown the system, remove the three original 3TB HDDs and put in the three 10TB HDDs. Then go in to the MegaRAID boot WebUI and try the above configurations and migrations. Don't worry about actually letting the RAID level migrations complete just cancel and delete the array after each configuration and migration test to make sure the proposed path will actually work.

 

1. Shutdown
2. Remove 3x  3TB HDDs from system
3. Insert 3x 10TB HDDs in to system
4. Power on system and press boot prompt to enter RAID WebUI
5. Configure a new 2x 10TB RAID 1 array
6. Edit this new array and choose to RAID level migrate it to RAID 5 using the remaining Unconfigured Good 10TB disk
7. Cancel array migration/rebuild and delete array
8. Configure new 1x 10TB RAID 0 array
9. Edit this new array and choose to RAID level migrate it to RAID 5 or RAID 1 depending on what is allowed

As long as the above testing works as expected put the 3x 3TB original disks back in the system along with however many 10TB's you can also put in. Configure new array using appropriate 10TB disks you managed to install in to the system.

[iscariot.tf]

OK I see.  Thank you.  Question on the migration.  I have the drive configured as a simple single NTFS volume with a bunch of folders and shares.  What is the best way to copy all the data over to the new array and preserve the file permissions and shares?

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, iscariot.tf said:

OK I see.  Thank you.  Question on the migration.  I have the drive configured as a simple single NTFS volume with a bunch of folders and shares.  What is the best way to copy all the data over to the new array and preserve the file permissions and shares?

robocopy is good for that

[iscariot.tf]

4 hours ago, leadeater said:

robocopy is good for that

I'm using robocopy now.  Watching it run now but I don't see the permissions moving.  Are those copied at the end?

[leadeater]

18 minutes ago, iscariot.tf said:

I'm using robocopy now.  Watching it run now but I don't see the permissions moving.  Are those copied at the end?

What is your exact robocopy commant you are using?

 

Should be something similar to 'robocopy <sourcedir> <destinationdir> /copyall /mir /zb /r:1 /w:3'

 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy

[iscariot.tf]

5 hours ago, leadeater said:

What is your exact robocopy commant you are using?

 

Should be something similar to 'robocopy <sourcedir> <destinationdir> /copyall /mir /zb /r:1 /w:3'

 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy

robocopy D: E: /COPYALL /xd "System Volume Information"
D: is the original and E: is the new one, as you would expect.  I had to ignore that directory because I was getting access denied.  I was doing this from a command window running as administrator

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, iscariot.tf said:

robocopy D: E: /COPYALL /xd "System Volume Information"
D: is the original and E: is the new one, as you would expect.  I had to ignore that directory because I was getting access denied.  I was doing this from a command window running as administrator

Looks correct to me, yea maybe the perms are applied at the end. If not there is a robocopy mode to only copy ACLs/Perms and not data.

[iscariot.tf]

I tried yours as well, at least a modified version.  I don't see any shares on there

 

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, iscariot.tf said:

I tried yours as well, at least a modified version.  I don't see any shares on there

What do you mean you don't see any shares? Only the data will get copied, you will have to create the shares again. You'll likely have to stop/delete the current shares, not the data just un-share the folder/drive.

[iscariot.tf]

Ohhh ok.  My mistake.  I wasn't following that.  I thought that the shares were being recreated which I had never seen before