Virtual Disk Expansion; Using Free Capacity; Using Unconfigured Capacity; Disk Group Migration - Dell PowerVault MD3260i Administrator's Manual

NOTE: You can also use the Command Line Interface (CLI) on both Windows and Linux hosts to add free
capacity to a disk group. For more information, see the CLI Guide.
NOTE: After the capacity expansion is completed, additional free capacity is available in the disk group for
creation of new virtual disks or expansion of existing virtual disks.

Virtual Disk Expansion

Virtual disk expansion is a dynamic modification operation that increases the capacity of standard virtual disks.
NOTE: Snapshot repository virtual disks can be expanded from the CLI or from MD Storage Manager. All other
virtual disk types are expandable only from the CLI.
If you receive a warning that the snapshot repository virtual disk is becoming full, you may expand the snapshot
repository virtual disk from MD Storage Manager. For step-by-step instructions, see

Using Free Capacity

You can increase the capacity of a virtual disk using the free capacity on the disk group of the standard virtual disk or
the snapshot repository virtual disk.
The Total Unconfigured Capacity node, shown in the Storage & Copy Services tab, is a contiguous region of unassigned
capacity on a defined disk group. When increasing virtual disk capacity, some or all of the free capacity may be used to
achieve the required final capacity. Data on the selected virtual disk remains accessible while the process for
increasing virtual disk capacity is in progress.

Using Unconfigured Capacity

You can increase the capacity of a standard virtual disk or a snapshot repository virtual disk using the unconfigured
capacity when no free capacity exists on a disk group. An increase is achieved by adding unconfigured capacity, in the
form of unassigned physical disks, to the disk group of the standard virtual disk or the snapshot repository virtual disk.
See Disk Group Expansion.
For more information, see the online help topics.

Disk Group Migration

Disk group migration allows to you to migrate a disk group by exporting a disk group and then importing it to another
storage array. You can also export a disk group to store data offline.
When you export a disk group, all the physical disks become offline. To ensure that the export is successful, at least two
physical disks that are not part of the disk group you are migrating must be present in the storage array.
When you migrate the exported disk group to the new storage array, the import fails if a majority of the physical disks
are not present in the group. For example, both the physical disks in a two-disk RAID 1 configuration, or three physical
disks (one from each disk pair) in a four-disk RAID 10 configuration must be present.

Export Disk Group

The export disk group operation prepares the physical disks in the disk group for removal. You can remove the physical
disks for offline storage, or you can import the disk group to a different storage array. After you complete the export disk
group operation, all of the physical disks are offline. Any associated virtual disks or free capacity nodes are no longer
shown in the MD Storage Manager.
Snapshot Repository Capacity.
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