How to expand striped meta device on EMC symmetrix VMAX using symcli

How to expand striped meta device on EMC symmetrix VMAX using symcli

Expanding a concatenated meta device on an EMC Symmetrix VMAX using symcli is a straight forward procedure. Click here for the procedure. However, the expansion of striped meta is rather complicated. The procedure includes creating a new meta device of equal size and construct (same number of LUNs, hyper size) and using that as a BCV device as a temporary staging area.

 

A RAID-5 BCV device (BCV+R-5) can be used as a staging area. If you are running a really old version of Enginuity version, then RAID-5 BCV may not be supported, in this case use way mirror BCV.

 

Step by step striped meta expansion procedure using symcli

 

The device to expand – 0065 is 180GB and is striped across 3*60GB hypers

 

 1. Create a new striped meta device of the same capacity as the original meta device (180GB) using 3*60GB hypers - 017d,017e and 017f. This will be used as a temporary staging area for expansion

 

symconfigure -sid <xxx> -cmd “form meta from device 017d, config=striped, stripe_size=1 cyl; add dev 017e:017f to meta 017d;” prep

 

Once the prepare command completes successfully, commit the changes

 

symconfigure -sid <xxx> -cmd “form meta from device 017d, config=striped, stripe_size=1 cyl; add dev 017e:017f to meta 017d;” comm

 

 2.  Set the attribute of the new device to BCV RAID-5

 

symconfigure -sid <xxx> -cmd “convert dev 017d to BCV+R-5;” prep

 

Once the prepare command completes without errors, commit changes

 

symconfigure -sid <xxx> -cmd “convert dev 017d to BCV+R-5;” comm

 

 3.  Expand the meta device. The expansion of striped meta requires “n” number of hypers, where “n” is the number of columns in the stripe. For example, if you are expanding a striped meta which has 5 members (striped across 5 hypers), then you will need 5 new hypers. The device we are using in this example, 0065, is currently striped across 3 devices, therefore we need 3 new hypers 0187,0188 and 0189.
 

symconfigure -sid <xxx> -cmd “add dev 0187:0189 to meta 0065,protect_data=TRUE,bcv_meta_head=017d” prep

 

Once the prepare command completes without errors, commit changes

 

symconfigure -sid <xxx> -cmd “add dev 0187:0189 to meta 0065,protect_data=TRUE,bcv_meta_head=017d” comm

 

Wait for the process to complete and that’s it, all done!