Making New Storage Available

After you add storage servers to a rack to increase the storage capacity of an existing system, you must run racli commands to make the additional storage available for backups.

Caution:

After you add a storage cell to the Recovery Appliance, you cannot remove it.

On install by default, a DELTA disk group name is created and the storage location name, which is often identical to the disk group name (DELTA, DELTA1, etc.). However the disk group name and storage location name are two different things. Storage is expanded using the UPDATE_STORAGE_LOCATION command.

Note:

The default storage location and the ASM disk group are both called DELTA, but are not the same thing.

Before you begin the procedure, ensure that:

• The new storage cells have the same Exadata image version as the existing storage cells.

• The new storage cells do not have any associated databases. (You can run cellcli -e list database to verify this is the case.)

• The root password of the new storage cell must still be the factory default.

To make the new storage available:

1. Log in to Recovery Appliance as root.
2. Change to the bin directory:

   # cd /opt/oracle.RecoveryAppliance/bin

3. Run the command to add the new storage cells.
   The following command adds storage cells named cellhost1 and cellhost2 to the Recovery Appliance. If three (3) or more cells of different size are being added, then a new disk group DELTA (n) is created, a rebalance is initiated, and expect the rebalance to take more time. The griddisks from the cells are automatically added to the ASM diskgroup.

   # racli add storage_cells --cells=cellhost1,cellhost2

4. If you are prompted to do so, run the command to add storage disks.
   The following command adds storage disks with the newly added cells cellhost1 and cellhost2:

   # racli add storage_disks --cells=cellhost1,cellhost2

   Note:

   You can execute this command while the system is running but the operation can take a while to complete and can negatively impact performance. Avoid running other I/O intensive tasks such as patching or maintenance during this time.
5. If you are prompted to update the storage location:
   1. Run the status command to ensure that the rebalance operation is complete.

      # racli status diskgroup

   2. Run the command to update the storage location.
      The following command increases the size of the storage location using the newly added cells cellhost1 and cellhost2:

      # racli update storage_location --cells=cellhost1,cellhost2

6. (Optional) When the procedure is complete, check the size of the storage location.

See Also:

• RACLI Overview for details about the commands used in the procedure.

• Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Administrator’s Guide for information on how to view storage location information.