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This is similar to this question:

HP G8 migrate RAID0 to RAID1 with CLI commands

But different enough that I think it is worth asking as a new question.

I have a Gen 10 HPE server with the P408i-a RAID controller.

Currently it just has a single disk, which it is treating as a 1 disk RAID0 array.

I want to add two more disks to it, and convert the result to a RAID5 array.

From ssacli, I can see "add" and "modify" options, but it isn't that clear how to combine this to do what I want.

In particular, under the help for the "add" command, it says "adding physical drives is the same as expanding an array", which to me implies that as soon as I run the "add", it will start a conversion to a 3 disk RAID0, which isn't what I want.

If I add the new drives as spares, and then run the modify command, will that work (i.e. will it work out it needs to absorb the spares to do the conversion)?

Michael Firth
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  • to be honestly, i would make a backup of the server or by an additionally of one ore two disk and create it from scratch – djdomi Aug 31 '19 at 09:40

2 Answers2

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As the server was running VMware ESXi, backing up and restoring would have been very time consuming. What I ended up doing, which worked for me, was the following three HPE commands (after inserting the new drives), with many hours of waiting in between as it completed the operation.

/opt/smartstorageadmin/ssacli/bin/ssacli ctrl slot=0 ld 1 add drives=allunassigned forced

(wait for several hours as RAID0 array reshapes)

/opt/smartstorageadmin/ssacli/bin/ssacli ctrl slot=0 ld 1 modify raid=5

(wait for several hours as RAID0 array changes to RAID5)

/opt/smartstorageadmin/ssacli/bin/ssacli ctrl slot=0 ld 1 modify size=max forced

Because "give the usable space to the visible drive" is a separate stage from "reshape the RAID array", the OS didn't see the intermediate state where the array appeared as a 3 disk RAID0 array.

I then followed the process at this link to get the VMware layer to see the additional space, which worked without needing any reboots:

https://michlstechblog.info/blog/esxi-expand-datastore-from-command-line/

Michael Firth
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0

Was unable to add to, but following Michael's steps worked for me as well.

Allowed me to go from a 600GB x2 in RAID 0 to a 600GB, 600GB, 2TB SSD's in RAID 5.

(Yes I know I'm not getting the full capacity)

TheZneaks
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  • Friends don't let friends use R5 - it's dangerous dude, nobody's used it for a decade, please use R1/10 or R6/60 - you should see how many people come here all the time because R5 has killed their data. – Chopper3 Feb 16 '22 at 12:19
  • @Chopper3 luckily this is my homelab infra, and all important stuff is backed up to internet, and also replicated to my other server at my parents with RAID 5 :D – TheZneaks Feb 17 '22 at 03:34
  • Please don't add "thank you" as an answer. Once you have sufficient [reputation](https://serverfault.com/help/whats-reputation), you will be able to [vote up questions and answers](https://serverfault.com/help/privileges/vote-up) that you found helpful. - [From Review](/review/late-answers/512453) – Patrick Mevzek Feb 19 '22 at 10:14