Performing the expansion

When you perform the expansion, the new grid nodes are added to your existing StorageGRID deployment.

1. Select Maintenance > Expansion.
   The Grid Expansion page appears. The Pending Nodes section lists all nodes that are ready to be added.

   
   
   

2. Click Configure Expansion.
   The Site Selection dialog appears.

   
   
   

3. Select the type of expansion you are starting:
   • If you are adding a new site, select New, and enter the name of the new site.
   • If you are adding grid nodes to an existing site, select Existing.
4. Click Save.
5. Review the Pending Nodes list, and confirm that it shows all of the grid nodes you deployed.
   As required, you can hover your cursor over a node's Grid Network MAC Address to see details about that node.

   
   
   

   Note: If a grid node is missing, confirm that it was deployed successfully.
6. From the list of pending nodes, approve the grid nodes for this expansion.
   1. Select the radio button next to the first pending grid node you want to approve.
   2. Click Approve.

      The grid node configuration form appears.

      
      
      

   3. As required, modify the general settings and the settings for the Grid Network, Admin Network, and Client Network:
      • Site: The name of the site the grid node will be associated with. If you are adding a new site, all nodes are added to the new site.
      • Name: The host name that will be assigned to the node, and the name that will be displayed in the Grid Manager.
      • NTP Role: The Network Time Protocol (NTP) role of the grid node. The options are Automatic, Primary, and Client. Selecting Automatic assigns the Primary role to Admin Nodes, Storage Nodes with ADC services, API Gateway Nodes, and any grid nodes that have non-static IP addresses. All other grid nodes are assigned the Client role.
        Note: Assign the Primary NTP role to at least two nodes at each site. This provides redundant system access to external timing sources.
      • ADC Service: For Storage Nodes, this option determines whether the selected node will run the Administrative Domain Controller service. Select Automatic to have this option applied automatically by the system as required, or select Yes or No to explicitly set this option for the grid node. For example, because you cannot add an ADC service to a node after it has been deployed, you might need to select Yes if this expansion will be followed by a decommissioning of Storage Nodes containing the ADC service at this site. See information about the ADC quorum in the recovery and maintenance instructions.
      • IPv4 Address (CIDR): The CIDR network address for the network interface. For example: 172.16.10.100/24
      • Gateway: The default gateway of the grid node. For example: 172.16.10.1
      • Subnets (CIDR): One or more subnetworks for the Admin Network.
   4. Click Save.
      The approved grid node moves to the Approved Nodes list.

      
      
      

      • To modify the properties of an approved grid node, select its radio button, and click Edit.
      • To move an approved grid node back to the Pending Nodes list, select its radio button, and click Reset.
      • To permanently remove an approved grid node, power the node off. Then, select its radio button, and click Remove.
   5. Repeat these steps for each pending grid node you want to approve.
      Note: If possible, you should approve all pending grid notes and perform a single expansion. More time will be required if you perform multiple small expansions.
7. When you have approved all grid nodes, enter the Provisioning Passphrase, and click Expand.
   After a few minutes, the page updates to display the status of the expansion procedure. When tasks that affect individual grid node are in progress, the Grid Node Status section lists the current status for each grid node.

   
   
   

   Note: A site expansion includes an additional task to configure Cassandra for the new site.
8. As soon as the Download Recovery Package link appears, download the Recovery Package file.
   You must download an updated copy of the Recovery Package file as soon as possible after making grid topology changes to the StorageGRID system. The Recovery Package file allows you to restore the system if a failure occurs.
   1. Click the download link.
   2. Enter the provisioning passphrase, and click Start Download.
   3. When the download completes, open the .zip file and confirm it includes a gpt-backup directory and a *_SAID.zip file. Then, extract the *_SAID.zip file, go to the /GID*_REV* directory, and confirm you can open the passwords.txt file.
   4. Copy the downloaded Recovery Package file (.zip) to two safe, secure, and separate locations.
      Attention: The Recovery Package file must be secured because it contains encryption keys and passwords that can be used to obtain data from the StorageGRID system.
9. Continue monitoring the expansion until all tasks are complete and the Configure Expansion button reappears.