Expand storage pool size in FlashArray

As your cluster usage increases and the data on your storage pools grows, you may start to run out of capacity. In order to correct this, you must determine the most efficient way to expand your storage pool size.

Portworx allows you to expand your storage pools completely online (with a few exceptions) with the following two methods:

• resize-drive: Using this method, you can vertically expand the storage pool size by increasing the size of the existing drives. All drives in the pool need to be resized to the same size for this operation. If the underlying infrastructure or the cloud provider supports resizing drives, this is the preferred option, as resizing disks involves no data movement and ensures zero downtime.

• add-drive: Using this mode, you can horizontally expand the storage pool by adding drives. The new drive(s) will need to match the existing drives in size and IOPS properties (if available). This operation might involve a significant amount of data movement, since the existing data needs to be restriped. This operation can also be performed online and requires no downtime. Note that the pool runs in degraded mode during the add-drive operation.

  Limitations:

  • If the pool is at or greater than 90% of its capacity, this operation can only be performed in pool maintenance mode.

note

If a pool to be resized contains an auto journal device, Portworx automatically performs data partition resizing as part of the expansion operation.

Expand storage pool size

Depending on the drives you want to use to expand a pool, proceed to one of the following sections:

📄️ Disks managed by Portworx

Explore different methods for expanding your storage pool size with disks managed by Portworx.