13.13 Restriping a Software RAID 0 or 5 Device

In general, there are three reasons for restriping of software RAID 0 and 5 devices:

If the restriping process is interrupted, the RAID recognizes that when the system reboots, and automatically continues the restriping process. You can also use iManager to pause and resume a restriping process.

When expanding a RAID 5 on Linux, if the newly added drive goes down during the restripe, the restriping continues without the new partition and puts the RAID in a degraded state with one partition missing. If the same partition comes back online, it finishes the restripe. If the partition has completely failed, after the degraded restriping is complete, you can add a new replacement partition, and the RAID restripes to fix it.

When expanding a RAID 5 on NetWare, if the newly added drive fails during the restripe, this is considered a fault and the device and its pools are automatically deactivated. If the same partition comes back online, it finishes the restripe. If the partition fails to come back online, you must re-create the RAID to the desired size and recover from backup. (Handling this type of failure with a degraded restripe recovery (same as for RAID 5 on Linux) is planned for a future release.)

To manually resume or pause the Restripe process:

  1. In iManager, click Storage > Software RAIDs.

    For instructions, see Section 9.1.3, Accessing Roles and Tasks in iManager.

  2. Select a server in the eDirectory tree where you are logged in.

    For instructions, see Section 9.1.4, Selecting a Server to Manage.

  3. Make sure that there is no I/O for the volumes on the RAID device by deactivating the volume.

    1. Click Volumes.

    2. Select the volumes in the RAID device you want to expand.

    3. Click Deactivate (NetWare) or Dismount (Linux).

  4. Select a device in the Software RAIDs list.

    Wait for the page to refresh before continuing.

  5. Click Restripe.

    The restriping process begins or pauses immediately. Restriping severely degrades I/O performance until the restriping is complete.