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SANtricity 11.6
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Add capacity to a pool or volume group

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You can add drives to expand the free capacity in an existing pool or volume group. The expansion causes additional free capacity to be included in the pool or volume group. You can use this free capacity to create additional volumes. The data in the volumes remains accessible during this operation.

Before you begin

  • Drives must be in an Optimal status.

  • Drives must have the same drive type (HDD or SSD).

  • The pool or volume group must be in an Optimal status.

  • If the pool or volume group contains all secure-capable drives, add only drives that are secure-capable to continue to use the encryption abilities of the secure-capable drives.

    Secure-capable drives can be either Full Disk Encryption (FDE) drives or Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) drives.

About this task

For pools, you can add a maximum of 60 drives at a time or up to 60 drives through multiples of 5. For volume groups, you can add a maximum of two drives at a time. If you need to add more than the maximum number of drives, repeat the procedure. (A pool cannot contain more drives than the maximum limit for a storage array.)

Note

With the addition of drives, your preservation capacity may need to be increased. You should consider increasing your reserved capacity after an expansion operation.
Note

Avoid using drives that are Data Assurance (DA) capable to add capacity to a pool or volume group that is not DA capable. The pool or volume group cannot take advantage of the capabilities of the DA-capable drive. Consider using drives that are not DA capable in this situation.
Steps

  1. Select Storage › Pools & Volume Groups.

  2. Select the pool or volume group to which you want to add drives, and then click Add Capacity.

    The Add Capacity dialog box appears. Only the unassigned drives that are compatible with the pool or volume group appear.

  3. Under Select drives to add capacity…​, select one or more drives that you want to add to the existing pool or volume group.

    The controller firmware arranges the unassigned drives with the best options listed at the top. The total free capacity that is added to the pool or volume group appears below the list in Total capacity selected.

    Field Details
    Field Description

    Shelf

    Indicates the shelf location of the drive.

    Bay

    Indicates the bay location of the drive.

    Capacity (GiB)

    Indicates the drive capacity.

    • Whenever possible, select drives that have a capacity equal to the capacities of the current drives in the pool or volume group.

    • If you must add unassigned drives with a smaller capacity, be aware that the usable capacity of each drive currently in the pool or volume group is reduced. Therefore, the drive capacity is the same across the pool or volume group.

    • If you must add unassigned drives with a larger capacity, be aware that the usable capacity of the unassigned drives that you add is reduced so that they match the current capacities of the drives in the pool or volume group.

    Secure-Capable

    Indicates whether the drive is secure-capable.

    • You can protect your pool or volume group with the Drive Security feature, but all drives must be secure-capable to use this feature.

    • You can mix secure-capable and non-secure-capable drives, but the encryption abilities of the secure-capable drives cannot be used.

    • Secure-capable drives can be either Full Disk Encryption (FDE) drives or Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) drives.

    DA Capable

    Indicates whether the drive is Data Assurance (DA) capable.

    • Using drives that are not Data Assurance (DA) capable to add capacity to a DA-capable pool or volume group is not recommended. The pool or volume group no longer has DA capabilities, and you no longer have the option to enable DA on newly created volumes within the pool or volume group.

    • Using drives that are Data Assurance (DA) capable to add capacity to a pool or volume group that is non DA-capable is not recommended, because that pool or volume group cannot take advantage of the capabilities of the DA-capable drive (the drive attributes do not match). Consider using drives that are not DA-capable in this situation.

    DULBE capable

    Indicates whether the drive has the option for Deallocated or Unwritten Logical Block Error (DULBE). DULBE is an option on NVMe drives that allows an EF600 storage array to deallocate blocks that are part of a volume. Deallocating blocks on a drive can greatly reduce the time it takes to initialize volumes. In addition, hosts can deallocate logical blocks in the volume using the NVMe Dataset Management command.

  4. Click Add.

If you are adding drives to a pool or volume group, a confirmation dialog box appears if you selected a drive that causes the pool or volume group to no longer have one or more of the following attributes:

  • Shelf loss protection

  • Drawer loss protection

  • Full Disk Encryption capability

  • Data Assurance capability

  • DULBE capability

To continue, click Yes; otherwise click Cancel.

Results

After you add the unassigned drives to a pool or volume group, the data in each volume of the pool or volume group is redistributed to include the additional drives.