Very Computer

Hi!

Quote:> Hello,

> increasing the number of disks in an active raid 5 SSA requires a
> complete rebuild of the raid. Is this really true? Aren't there any
> possibilities to add a new disk without deleting and recreating the
> array?

Yes, it's true. You have to delete the array, add new disk(s) and
re-create the array.
It's an hardware (ssa) + software (lvm) limitation.

Best regards,
Mario (proud to use OS/2 and AIX)

No,  The reason is because AIX can not handle a disk changing size
dynamically.
The only IBM Raid Box that you can dynamically increase the size of a
raid5 array on is
the 7137 in multi-lun mode with parity protection turned on.
this is because you get individual hdisk definitions even though data
and parity is striped across all drives.

--
Christopher DeVille

The OPINIONS expressed here are my own, not IBM's.
(Not that anyone else would want to take credit for my opinions anyway)

As has been pointed out, the short answer is no, you must backup your
data and then delete and re-create the array.

The longer answer is that since the array is an hdisk, if you're
adding a reasonable number of disks, you can put them into a RAID
array of their own and then add their resulting hdisk to the volume
group with the old array. Then you can merrily extend logical volumes
and/or filesystems to use the additional space in the volume group.

Now, this only makes sense if you're adding a reasonable number of
disks, generally around 4 or more.

        -- David