RAID6 -- best way to upgrade/migrate to larger drives?

  • I'm looking for tips on upgrading to larger drives. I have a RAID6 array of 6x500GB SSDs, and I'm preparing to replace them with 2TB SSDs. I see two ways I could do it, and I'm looking for any pros/cons/"gotchas" I may be missing in deciding which way to go.


    The current RAID is formatted as one 2TB LVM Physical Volume, which is the (only) PV in my (only) Volume Group, and all my actual data is in Logical Volumes in that VG.


    What I don't want to do is re-create all my volumes, then have to copy over the data, and re-setup my shares/permissions/etc. Clearly there's better ways than that.


    The first option I thought of is to simply replace all the drives in the RAID: one at a time, fail them out and restore onto the new larger drives; then "resize" the array to use the full new drive size (making it 6TB); then resize the PV to use all that space; the existing volumes would be unaffected, and the new space would just become available in the VG. (Right?)


    The other option would be to create a new RAID array with the new drives (I do have enough empty drive bays to make this possible); then add that as a second PV to the VG; then move all the data off the old PV onto the new PV; then remove the old PV; again, all the volumes and higher-level stuff (filesystems, shares, permissions, etc) are unaffected. (Right?)


    The main advantage of the first option is, no changing names and less fiddling with LVM (which I'm not as familiar with, though the pvmove and vgreduce commands "seem" clear enough). The advantage of the second option is that it avoids the the disadvantage of the first: not so many time-consuming and "scary" RAID operations; plus, I could start with just 4 drives and add more later.


    Would one of these options (or something I haven't thought of) be considered best practice? Are there any other risks, downsides, or "tricky parts" to either of these procedures that I should consider? Recommendations?

Jetzt mitmachen!

Sie haben noch kein Benutzerkonto auf unserer Seite? Registrieren Sie sich kostenlos und nehmen Sie an unserer Community teil!