Symptoms

When the hard drives in a disk group are replaced with larger disks, the 'Expand Virtual Disk' option is not available in the PERC HII Configuration Utility: System Setup -> PERC Setup -> VD Operation drop down list Figure 1: HII configuration Utility--VD OperationThe 'Edit Disk Capacity' option is available in the iDRAC WebGUI->Storage->"Virtual Disks" -> VD Actions drop down list.Figure 2: iDRAC WebGUI->Storage->Virtual DiskAfter selecting "Edit Disk Capacity," the "Available Space" shows 0.00 GB.Figure 3: iDRAC WebGUI->'Expand Virtual Disk Capacity' page.The operation fails when trying to expand the virtual disk capacity by entering the maximum available size in the "Capacity" field.Figure 4: Job Queue Error messageIf there is available space in an existing array, use the PERCCLI utility to expand."PERCCLI /cx/vx show expansion" shows the available space under NoArrExp.Figure 5: PERCCLI output NoArrExpHowever, if the hard drives in a disk group have been replaced with larger disks, the available space is shown under WithArrExp in the output of "PERCCLI /cx/vx show expansion."Figure 6: PERCCLI output WithArrExp

Cause

The PERC HII Configuration Utility and iDRAC do not support expanding the array capacity.

Resolution

Expanding the array capacity using the Dell PERCCLI utility: 1. Run "perccli /cx/vx show expansion" to determine the available expansion space. 2. Then run "perccli /cx/vx expand Size=<xx> expandarray" to perform the array expansion. The expand command will expand the virtual drive within the existing array if there is available space, or expand into additional capacity if the drives have been replaced with larger ones. The <xx> size value is specified in GB. If the "expandarray" option is specified, the full array capacity will be expanded. If this option is not specified, only the virtual drive capacity will be expanded rather than the full array. After replacing all array members with larger drives, use the PERCCLI utility to expand the existing virtual disk to a larger size using the "expandarray" parameter. This behavior is also documented in the PERC11 User's Guide under the 'Features of PowerEdge RAID Controller 11'-> 'reconfiguring virtual disks' section:https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/perc-h755/docs 

Support Cases