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Expanding a Volume Definition with MetaSAN
Greetings. I’ve just added another RAID pile on my XRAID, which is on a separate controller. I’ve initialized it & formatted it, and we’ve been able to successfully add it to MetaSAN, where it appears as a separate volume (SAN1 & SAN2).
I’d really like for the whole thing (both RAID sets) to act as one logical volume for performance purposes. Is it possible to “expand” the RAID definition without wiping the data on the first set? If I have to, that’s okay – it’s double-backed-up – do I need to look at my RAID Admin, Disk Utility, or is there a way to do it in MetaSAN?
Thanks for any suggestions.
– Allan White, Video Producer, Luis Palau Assoc.
Quad 3Ghz Mac Pro, 10GB RAM, X1900 GPU, MetaSAN, CatDV Server
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1 Reply
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Apparently, this question didn’t have much traction with this community! That’s okay, because I found the answer – I thought I’d post it for the next poor soul with this question. My SAN consultant is an XSAN guru, and as MetaSAN does things a little differently, it wasn’t clear if I should look to the SAN software for grouping LUNs into a volume, or at Apple’s tools.
The solution was to remove the two volumes (created after adding a second RAID set, to fill the XRAID) from the MetaSAN definition, create a RAID 0 (“striped”) set comprised of the two RAID5 sets in Disk Utility. Pretty simple, actually. While it did wipe the first set (it’s okay, double-backed up!), creating the new, combined RAID definition only took a few seconds.
Performance is now excellent (160mb/sec for one client)! Now to copy back allll the data…
PS: MetaSAN/LAN has been great, it’s cheaper and very flexible (as well as cross-platform). Highly recommended, but DO hire a SAN consultant – I wish I had from the start.
– Allan White, Video Producer, Luis Palau Assoc.
Quad 3Ghz Mac Pro, 10GB RAM, X1900 GPU, MetaSAN, CatDV Server
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