Linux Software RAID 5 - XFS - Growing Filesystem

[Sam Wynens]

Hello,

Doing this a second time since I botched the first go round somehow.

Setup used to be 4x 1TB drives in software raid 5 using a partition on each drive, filesystem created using that device in the TUI using majority of that space available, vdisk created in that filesystem using majority of that space. I left some buffer space in everything just in case. For example, raid space was around 3.6TB, filesystem size set to 3.25TB, vdisk size set to 3TB. Not exact numbers but you get the jist.

I have just upgraded all drives in the array to 4x4TB drives by failing 1 drive at a time and letting it rebuild after adding the new drive. Next I grew the array and am currently letting it resync. After resync is complete I plan on following these instructions in expanding out the partition (http://www.powelltechconsulting.com/grow-xfs-formated-partition-with-parted/).

Are these instructions still relevant?

What should be the next step to ensure that my ESXi hosts will be able to see the present LUN as having more space available which would then allow me to increase the size of the RDM in my guest and then allowing the guest to expand the HFS+ partition it created?

I am running v1.3.4. Device was created using vdisk_fileio and is being presented over FC to the fabric to a couple of ESXi hosts.

Thanks in advance!

Sam

[Marc Smith]

On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 5:56 PM, Sam Wynens <samw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Doing this a second time since I botched the first go round somehow.
>
> Setup used to be 4x 1TB drives in software raid 5 using a partition on each
> drive, filesystem created using that device in the TUI using majority of
> that space available, vdisk created in that filesystem using majority of
> that space. I left some buffer space in everything just in case. For
> example, raid space was around 3.6TB, filesystem size set to 3.25TB, vdisk
> size set to 3TB. Not exact numbers but you get the jist.
>
> I have just upgraded all drives in the array to 4x4TB drives by failing 1
> drive at a time and letting it rebuild after adding the new drive. Next I
> grew the array and am currently letting it resync. After resync is complete
> I plan on following these instructions in expanding out the partition
> (http://www.powelltechconsulting.com/grow-xfs-formated-partition-with-parted/).
>
> Are these instructions still relevant?

They appear to be relevant. Don't forget to backup everything.

>
> What should be the next step to ensure that my ESXi hosts will be able to
> see the present LUN as having more space available which would then allow me
> to increase the size of the RDM in my guest and then allowing the guest to
> expand the HFS+ partition it created?

Stop SCST, expand/grow the "virtual disk" file, and then start SCST.
Rather, SCST would already be stopped since you have to unmount the
file system for the FS expansion, so just start it again after all
those steps. =)

>
> I am running v1.3.4. Device was created using vdisk_fileio and is being
> presented over FC to the fabric to a couple of ESXi hosts.
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Sam
>

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[Sam Wynens]

Thanks Marc. Seems OS X doesn't like outside manipulation of drives.. This is a LUN attached as a raw device map to an OS X guest. I expanded the "virtual disk" file using dd in the form of "dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/vdisk/itunes/movies bs=1M count=0 seek=<final size of file>" and of course that is expected to mess up the GPT backup partition since its now in the middle of the drive and on at the end. I let parted fix the location and the "virtual drive" was reporting the proper partitions and file sizes.

Over on the ESXi side I saw the new drive size successfully. Proceeded to boot the machine and OS X is now complaining about the disk for some reason or another. Won't let me resize the partition because it claims journalling isn't enabled. Whatever.

Long story short, I've over committed the storage a bit and am copying all the data from the old drive to the new one and will delete the old vdisk as soon as its done. I've accomplished what I set out to do which was expanding the media library drive, albeit in a round about way.

Sam