Re: Adding additional storage to ASP

This is great!  I never would have found out this much information on my own.  I'm at work now preparing for a full system save and adding the new disks to ASP.

Thanks to everyone for the insight.


________________________________
From: DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, December 15, 2013 9:39 PM
Subject: Re: Adding additional storage to ASP


BJ,

That paints a much clearer picture!

Your current disks are the same size, PHYSICALLY, but they report
different size because they have RAID striping on them. Back in the
"AS/400" days we had SCSI disks which brought clear rules on RAID set
building. With IBM i on POWER and SAS drives the RAID sets stripe across
all disks so the size of the disks varies slightly.

So in this case you need to start RAID on the disks which will lower
their apparent size to perhaps 127GB.

The rule you were referring to about different size disks has to do with
Large differences in size. If you had a set of 70GB disks and a set of
140GB Disks you can clearly imagine that the 140 GB disks would end up
twice as busy as they have twice the capacity and will naturally have
twice as much of your stuff on them. This is generally the accepted
limit for size difference, stated as "The largest disk should not be
more than double the size of the smallest disk."  Thus 35 GB disks
should not be in the same ASP as 140GB disks.

Your disks are the same physical size and will at most only be slightly
different in size so you are good there.

Once the new drives are RAIDed you'll add AND BALANCE them to the ASP.
The system will them move (in your case) 1/2 of your current data to the
new drives before it allows NEW data to be written to those new disks.
This is because you are doubling the number of disks and disk capacity.
Once that move is complete the disks will be become an active part of
the ASP and life will be good!

Note that in your case if you 'oops' and do not select "And Balance"
when you add the disks you likely would cause little or no pain. This is
because you're adding so many disks that they can handle the new data.
If you were adding just 2 or 4 drives to the 24 existing drives that
would be a big difference.

        - Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com

On 12/15/2013 6:19 PM, BJ Vail wrote:

*This message was transferred with a trial version of CommuniGate(r) Pro*
A little more info.  The current storage size is 2,997.5 GB.  Capacity on the existing disks is 124.9 GB each, additional disks are 136.3 GB each (reported from iSeries Navigator).


________________________________
  From: BJ Vail <bjvail@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, December 15, 2013 4:37 PM
Subject: Re: Adding additional storage to ASP



I used the AS/400 term loosely.  It's a Power 720 system.  I currently have 24 126.9 GB drives protected with raid 5 and am needing add an additional 24 139 GB drives with the other drawer I mentioned earlier.

Thanks for the response!



------------------------------
On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 3:58 PM CST DrFranken wrote:

Sir you are magical!! You are the only one on the planet that has SAS
disks connected to such an old machine!

As to the breaking of the ASP that's unlikely but there are some things
that you are clearly aware of with your comments. However:

You didn't say how big the current disks are or the quantity of them.
You also didn't say how big the new disks are or how many of them are
being added to the system ASP.
We also don't know the total capacity of your current storage, how full
it is, or if it's RAID or Mirror protected or (shudder) not protected at
all!

Without that the best advice is to assure the new disk units are
protected when adding them to the ASP and be CERTAIN to use the "ADD AND
BALANCE" option when you do that. Failure to select "AND BALANCE" has
been known to bring systems completely to their knees. This is in
extreme situations but avoiding such problems is your best defense.

Better advice is possible with additional information.

          - Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com

On 12/15/2013 1:21 PM, BJ Vail wrote:

I recently added an additional disk storage unit to my AS/400.  It's IBM Feature Code 5887, IBM EXP24S SFF Gen2 I/O Drawer.  These disks are supposed to be added to the system and I'm a little unsure about how to do this.

I'm worried that I'll break the system if I add the additional 24 disks to the System ASP.  The new disks are a larger size than the existing ones.  I'm looking for a little insight about getting these disks added and usable by the system.

Thanks in advance,

BJ

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