HP 3PAR Grow Remote Copy Virtual Volume

Growing a virtual volume (VV) on a 3PAR array is very easy however when using Remote Copy (RC) to replicate this volume between arrays you need to carry out the growth task slightly differently. As usual screenshots and command output may be edited to remove sensitive details.

Below we have a screenshot from the HP 3PAR Management Console –

3PAR Management Console

Here we can see a few VVs after a filter is applied. I am interested in one called sqlbidev_logs_vv. This VV is 300GB in size at present and I need to increase it to 330GB. I’ve added some columns to my view so I can see the RC status, group and current synchronisation state. This array is currently holding the Read/Write copy of the remote copy as denoted by the ‘RW’ under the ‘Writable LUNs’ column.

When I try to increase the size of this VV through the GUI I get the following alert –

3PAR Management Console Alert

Let’s take a look at the RC setup for this VV –

3PAR Management Console - Remote Copy Setup

There is quite a bit of information on display here and unfortunately I have to block a lot of it out. We can see two 3PAR arrays with synchronous replication, a RC group is configured with two VVs attached to it. These represent the database and log drives for a SQL Business Intelligence (BI) development box. Currently the RC group is active and the status is ‘Synced’.

To grow the logs drive I need to stop the RC group, make my change then start it again. This can be achieved either via the GUI or through the CLI.

Stop RC Group via GUI

To stop the RC group via the GUI I can either right click on the group and select the option or use the menu toolbar along the top.

3PAR Management Console - Remote Copy Stop

3PAR Management Console - Remote Copy Stop

Stop RC Group via CLI

To stop a RC group via the CLI we use the stoprcopygroup command

3PAR01 cli% stoprcopygroup abc_sqlbidev_rcg
 Stopping group abc_sqlbidev_rcg. If volumes in the group are still synchronizing, 
 then their snapshots on the secondary side may get promoted. 
 Do you wish to continue?
 select q=quit y=yes n=no: y

GrowVV

Now that we have stopped our RC group we can grow the VV as normal using either the GUI or CLI.

GrowVV via GUI

Edit the VV and choose a new size then click ‘Finish’

3PAR Management Console - Edit Virtual Volume Size

GrowVV via CLI

To grow a VV via the CLI we use the growvv command

3PAR01 cli% growvv qlbidev_logs_vv 30g

Start RC Group

Now that we have grown our VV it’s time to start the RC group. We can either use the GUI or CLI, in this case I’ll use the CLI command startrcopygroup. Using the GUI is easy, again either via the toolbar or right click option.

3PAR01 cli% startrcopygroup abc_sqlbidev_rcg
 Group abc_sqlbidev_rcg starts, task ID = 8624 8625

If we now take a look at our tasks using the showtask command we can see that the RC group has synchronised both volumes.

 

3PAR01 cli% showtask

8624 remote_copy_sync abc_sqlbidev_db_vv           done     ---  --- 2015-05-05 16:12:11 BST 2015-05-05 16:12:14 BST n/a        n/a        
 8625 remote_copy_sync abc_sqlbidev_logs_vv         done     ---  --- 2015-05-05 16:12:11 BST 2015-05-05 16:12:12 BST n/a        n/a

 

If you are quick enough you can also check the RC menu and see the sync state and progress.

3PAR Management Console - Remote Copy Status

Once everything has settled it’s time to increase the size of the volume within the operating system of the host this volume is presented to and with that done we are finished.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.