How to Expand a RAID 5 Volume

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 1TB 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 Solaris 9 4/03. See Overview of Large Volume Support in Solaris Volume Manager for more information about large volume support in Solaris Volume Manager.

Steps

1. Make sure that you have a current backup of all data and that you have root access.

2. Read Background Information for Creating RAID 5 Volumes.

3. 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 and follow the instructions. For more information, see the online help.

   • Use the following form of the metattach command:

     metattach volume-name name-of-component-to-add

     • volume-name is the name for the volume to expand.

     • name-of-component-to-add specifies the name of the component to attach to the RAID 5 volume.

     See the metattach(1M) man page for more information.

Example 15–3 Adding a Component to a RAID 5 Volume

# metattach d2 c2t1d0s2
d2: column is attached

This example shows the addition of slice c2t1d0s2 to an existing RAID 5 volume named d2.

See Also

For a UFS, run the growfs command on the RAID 5 volume. See Volume and Disk Space Expansion.

An application, such as a database, that uses the raw volume must have its own way of growing the added space.