Add new disks to the datastore while the host is run

It’s an usual problem when the server administrators want to configure more hard disks on their servers without any service interruptions or data loss through wrong array configuration. The issue will be complicated if your server is a hypervisor. If you make a little mistake during disk configuration, it can  lead to loss of entire VMs and consequently their data. So if any HP customized ESXi version are deployed as your host (or another customized setup file for other vendors), you can leverage your array configuration without any interrupt or downtime. Because there is no more need to reboot the host and configure server’s arrays by Popular F8 RAID Menu or HP Smart Start on boot environment. So based on ESXi versions you should execute one of these commands:

1.   For versions before 6.0:  /opt/hp/hpssacli/bin/hpssacli
2.   For versions after ESXi 6.5:  /opt/smartstorageadmin/ssacli/bin/ssacli

Whereas I encountered this situation in ESXi version 6.0 U3, next CLI are based on this version of ESXi HP-Customized:

1	Device Scanning	hpssacli rescan
2	Physical Disk Status	hpssacli ctrl slot=0 pd all show status
3	Logical Disk Status	hpssacli ctrl slot=0 pd all show status
4	Turn on/off Blink PD LED	hpssacli ctrl slot=0 ld 3 modify led=on/off
5	Create New RAID x	hpssacli ctrl slot=0 create type=ld drives=2I:1:5,2I:1:6,2I:1:7,2I:1:8 raid=0/1/5
6	Add PD to LV	hpssacli ctrl slot=0 ld 2 add drives=2I:1:5,2I:1:6
7	Add Spare to all array	hpssacli ctrl slot=0 array all add spares=2I:1:9
8	Check Configuration	hpssacli ctrl all show config

     

I hope you enjoy it, but attention: Before any change to your disk array, check all disks slots, numbers and so on, then execute your new raid setup commands.