Online Capacity Expansion (OCE) on LSI based cards: How?

[Stereodude]

So I have an IBM ServeRAID M5016 which is equivalent to an LSI 9265-8i with 1gB CacheVault. I have version 15.03.01.00 MSM installed. Right now I have a 6x6TB RAID-6 array on the card. I have two more 6TB drives I want to add to the array. Based on my Googling I supposedly should be able to right click on the virtual drive in the Logical tab and pick "Advanced Operations" and then Reconstruction Wizard. There's just one problem, there is no Advanced Operations option.

Should the option be there? Do I need to do something to enable the Advanced Operations menu? Does this card not support OCE? (IBM/Lenovo's product page says it does) Is there another way to do it from the GUI? Should I be using the command line instead?

Yes, I know OCE isn't the greatest thing in the world. I intentionally want to try it to see how long it takes, how/if it works, what the array performance is while expanding, etc. before I put this NAS/server into use. Basically a test run so I can know what to expect in the future should I use it...

I also looked into the command line instead. It looks like the StorCLI migrate command is what I want to use.

The PDF manual says:
storcli /cx/vx start migrate <type=raidlevel> [option=<add | remove> disk=<e1:s1,e2:s2 ...> ]

has this input example:
storcli /c0/v3 start migrate type=r5 option=add disk=e5:s2,e5:s3

My problem is all of my drives have the same enclosure and slot number, so that's presumably insufficient (haven't tried it).

StorCLI64.exe /c0 /eall /sall show

Drive Information :
=================

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
EID:Slt DID State DG  Size Intf Med SED PI SeSz Model  Sp
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
16:0  17 Onln   0 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
16:0  18 Onln   0 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
16:0  19 Onln   0 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
16:0  20 Onln   0 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
16:0  21 Onln   0 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
16:0  22 Onln   0 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
16:0  23 UGood  - 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
16:0  24 UGood  - 5.456 TB SATA HDD N  N  512B TOSHIBA MG04ACA600E U
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The help from StorCLI says something slightly different:

storcli /cx/vx start migrate type=raidx [option=add|remove drives=[e:]s|[e:]s-x|[e:]s-x,y] [Force]

disk in the PDF manual is actually drives. I know e is the enclosure ID, and s is the slot, but I don't know what s-x or s-x,y denote or how I can potentially use them to identify the two drives I want to add.

Is there some trick to doing this more easily or is this intentionally painful so people won't do it?

 

[MiniKnight]

I haven't done this in so long but can't you just use the disk ID number?

 

[poto]

Here are some reference points:

LSI 9271-8i array reconstruction

As far as initiating the OCE, try:

right-click "Drive Group"
left-click "Modify Drive Group"
check "confirm" "Yes" to proceed
select raid level "Next", then select available drives, etc.

It is sloooow, but it does work.

 

[Stereodude]

I haven't done this in so long but can't you just use the disk ID number?

No idea. Are you thinking the ID is x or just to use the ID? Since poto's suggestion seems to be the way to do it in the GUI I will probably abandon the command line.

Here are some reference points:

LSI 9271-8i array reconstruction

As far as initiating the OCE, try:

right-click "Drive Group"
left-click "Modify Drive Group"
check "confirm" "Yes" to proceed
select raid level "Next", then select available drives, etc.

It is sloooow, but it does work.

Yikes, that's a long time. I'm not sure I should even bother attempting this. I may start it run a few benchmarks, note the time estimate, and then cancel it since this is a just for fun exercise.

FWIW, the 6x6TB RAID-6 array did a full initialize in about 11hours 45minutes.

 

[Stereodude]

Oh my... The time estimate is just over 5 days. Here's a benchmark during reconstruction:

Here's one of the 6x6TB R6 config: