Adding, resizing and removing LUN's without restarting SLES

Hello, Community!

This post talks about the processes of adding, resizing and removing LUN's without restarting SLES or the OES Linux SUSE Server 10,11,12. Please see more details below.

ENVIRONMENT

ISSUE DESCRIPTION

RESOLUTION

Adding, resizing or removing LUN on a machine that can be rebooted is typically not a difficult task. (Hardware level changes are picked up on the server reboot, and the filesystem can then be created or resized using filesystem specific tools.) However, dynamic storage changes are dependent upon the hardware and software (specifically filesystem) in use. Also, the process varies slightly depending on which SLES version the server is running.

The general process is to add or resize the LUN on the SAN, rescan the servers' SCSI layer to detect the changes, rebuild the MPIO maps, and then add or modify the filesystem. More specific steps are as follows:

Adding an LUN

1. Create the LUN on the SAN, and assign it to the server.

2. On the server, execute `rescan-scsi-bus.sh`. Use `lsscsi` to confirm the LUN is seen by the OS. If the disk is not seen, repeat this step using different command line parameters to scan for all devices (i.e. -w -c -l). If the LUN is still not seen, a reboot may be required.

NOTE - VMware environments may require the -a or --alltargets parameter in order to detect new disks properly.

1. Once the disk is seen by the OS, execute `multipath` or `multipath -v4` (verbose) to build the new MPIO map.

2. On SLES 10 execute `udevtrigger`. (On SLES11 udevadm trigger is executed automatically)

Resizing an LUN

1. Increase the size of the LUN on the SAN.

2. On the server, execute `echo 1 > /sys/block/sdX/device/rescan`.

3. Resize the MPIO map.
   a) On SLES11 or SLES12, use `multipathd -k'resize map <MPIO_MAP_NAME>'`  
   b) If the resize command fails to resize the LUN or if running SLES10, restart the multipathd daemon using `/sbin/multipathd restart`

NOTE - There is no space between the -k and 'resize in the multipathd command.

1. After confirming the MPIO map reflects the correct size, resize the filesystem using the appropriate filesystem specific tool. (i.e. resize2fs, resize_reiserfs, pvresize, lvresize, nssmu, etc.).

NOTE: The above procedure is suitable when zero system downtime is required, but doesn't apply for zero application downtime. When an application is actively using a LUN that is being resized, it should be stopped. To keep applications running may lead to unpredictable results.

Removing an LUN

1. Stop all file access to the LUN to be removed and umount the filesystem if applicable.

2. If LVM was used on the device(s) to be removed, make sure that no Logical Volumes, Volume Groups or Physical Volumes are still present / in use on the relevant device(s). For more information see “man lvremove”, “man vgremove” and “man pvremove”.

3. To verify there are no open files left for the device(s) use “lsof /dev/device_name”

4. Check in the output of `multipath -ll` for the WWID of the LUN to be deleted.

5. Remove the WWID using `multipath -f <WWID>`.

6. Remove the multipath device from ALL paths to the LUN, run `echo 1 > /sys/bus/scsi/devices/${H:B:T:L}/delete`  (Where H = host:B = bus:T = target:L = lun) For example, 4:0:0:1

NOTE – If any process should still access the removed LUN, a system crash can occur. Make sure that all processes and applications have been stopped and there's nothing accessing the device.

1. Ensure the LUNs have disappeared from the output of `lsscsi`.

2. Remove the stale block device entries, on SLES 11 use `multipathd reconfigure`, SLES 10 requires an additional `udevtrigger`

3. Hide the LUNs on the storage side.

If the above steps do not work, the hardware may not support dynamic storage changes. If a server restart is not possible, please contact Technical Support for further investigation.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION