Deleting and re-creating a new volume in SANtricity

Products

• Security Analytics

Issue/Introduction

If a new volume needs to be deleted and re-created in SANtricity, these steps will walk you through the process.  NOTE . . . this process is destructive.  All data in the associated volumes will be permanently deleted.

Environment

Dell MD3860
NetApp E5600

Resolution

To delete a volume group and volume in SANtricity:

1. Connect to SANtricity from a Windows workstation.
2. Select the correct storage array in the listing.
3. Go to the Storage & Copy Services tab.
4. In the left window pane, expand Volume Groups
5. Right click the volume you want to delete and then click "Delete"
6. Make sure the correct volume is listed in the confirmation window.
7. Click "Delete"
8. Enter "yes" to confirm you are sure about deleting the volume (all data will be permanently lost for the volume) and click "OK"
9. Once completed, click "OK" in the confirmation dialog.
   
   

To create a new volume group and a new volume in SANtricity:

1. Connect to SANtricity from a Windows workstation.
2. Select the correct storage array in the listing.
3. Go to the Setup tab.
4. Click the link for Create Storage
5. Select "Create volume groups" in the Manual Configuration section of the window and then "OK"
   
   
   
   
6. Click "Next>" in the Introduction window.
7. Give the volume group a name and then click the selection for "Manual (Advanced): Choose specific drives to obtain capacity for the new volume group"
   
   
   
   
8. Click "Next>"
9. Select RAID 5 in the "Raid level:" drop down selector.
10. In the Unselected drives: box, select the drives you would like to assign to the volume (Tip:  You can click the top drive and then SHIFT+click the bottom drive to select all drives in-between)
11. Click "Add>"
12. Click "Calculate Capacity" to confirm the total capacity of the volume group.
    
    
    
    
13. Click "Finish"
14. When the dialog stating the volume group was successfully created appears, click "Yes" to create a new volume in the new volume group.
15. In the Create Volume dialog, make note of the "Free capacity" of the volume group.
16. For New volume capacity, change the Units to TB and enter the exact number mentioned under Free capacity.
17. Give the volume a name
18. For Map to host, click the drop down and choose the host for the head unit or sensor the the storage is connected to.
    
     
19. Leave everything else as default and click "Finish"
20. Once the volume creation is complete, click "OK"
    
    

Please note that the volume initialization process may take many hours depending on the size of the volume.  You can check the status of volume initialization by clicking the Summary tab and then clicking the link for "Operations in Progress". You will see something like this:

It is highly recommended to let the initialization complete before you activate capture to the storage array.  Although the volume can be used, disk I/O will directly affect the performance of the storage array as well as the time it takes to fully initialize.  

At this point, if the sensor was previously configured to use one of the volumes just deleted and recreated, you will need to go through the process of reconfiguring the sensor to use the new volume group even though it may be called the same.  Contact technical support for further assistance.