In general, attaching components is a short-term solution to a RAID-5 volume that is running out of space. For performance reasons, it is best to have a “pure” RAID-5 volume. If you must expand an existing RAID-5 volume to gain extra storage space, use this procedure.
Do not create volumes larger than 1 Tbyte if you expect to run the Solaris software with a 32–bit kernel or if you expect to use a version of the Solaris OS prior to the Solaris 9 4/03 release. See Overview of Multi-Terabyte Support in Solaris Volume Manager for more information about multiterabyte volume support in Solaris Volume Manager.
Read Background Information for Creating RAID-5 Volumes.
Make sure that you have a current backup of all data and that you have superuser access.
To attach additional components to a RAID-5 volume, use one of the following methods:
From the Enhanced Storage tool within the Solaris Management Console, open the Volumes node, then open the RAID-5 volume. Choose the Components pane. Then, choose Attach Component. Follow the onscreen instructions. For more information, see the online help.
Use the following form of the metattach command:
# metattach volume-name name-of-component-to-add |
Specifies the name of the RAID-5 volume to expand.
Specifies the name of the component to attach to the RAID-5 volume.
See the metattach(1M) man page for more information.
The following example shows the addition of slice c2t1d0s2 to an existing RAID-5 volume, d2.
# metattach d2 c2t1d0s2 d2: column is attached |
For a UFS file system, run the growfs command on the RAID-5 volume. See Volume and Disk Space Expansion Using the growfs Command.
Some applications, such as a database, do not use a file system. These applications instead use the raw volume. In these cases, the application must have its own way of growing the added space.