Question : Problem: Need help adding drive space to SAN and logical drives

I have attached an overview of our SAN infrastructure for review.  The body of this message will contain references to particular information in this diagram/attachment.  Here is an overview of the hardware and software:

The HP Storage Works Array Configuration Utility (ACU) is the main tool for configuring arrays on the HP Smart Array controllers (MSA 1500cs, MSA 1000, and MSA 30 that we use for our file storage).

The servers are HP ProLiant DL380 and DL385 with Windows 2003 Server installed.  

The section I am inquiring about is the blue array -- Logical Drive 1 -- named EDDY.  It is our main SQL server with Windows 2000 SQL installed.  I am cautious about adding arrays and extending logical drives with critical SQL software installed so thus the reason for my inquiry.

As illustrated in the attachment, EDDY has two drives currently being used that are part of a 14X72GB disk array. Currently EDDY only has 67.8 GB assigned to it with a RAID 1+0 configuration.  This is the D: drive which contains the the core DATA folder, transaction logs, and critical SQL files.  The D: is close to maxed and I am planning ahead.....needing to extend this drive beyond the slowly decreasing 10GB it currently has left out of the 67.8.  

My question is how to properly use HP's Array Configuration Utility to extend the D: beyond the currently allocated 67.8 GB.  My understanding is it is normal to do this while the system is running and live, however, wanted to verify this.  I will be doing this after hours anyway. If someone could take the time to review the attached SAN config diagram and provide input I would be quite grateful. You will notice there is both "Unassigned" and "Spare" space. Also, if there is anything to know specific to extending disk arrays with SQL installed this would be much appreciated as I have not had to work with a SAN array with SQL on it.

Thank you in advance for your time.

Trishajay

Answer : Problem: Need help adding drive space to SAN and logical drives

Yes, it is normal to leave the application running when performing logical drive extension. It takes ages to extend if you add disks to the array but parity is maintained. If you add just one disk all the RAID 1+0 logical disks will turn into RAID 5 logical disks which is not good, so always add in pairs. On some versions of firmware you can only extend the last logical drive on an array.

After that you can run diskpart to extend the volume under Windows, this can be done online as well but do it under as little load as possible.