5330 expansion shelf, 10TB META partition unusable?

[AndHed]

I just installed a expansion shelf for our 5330 appliance and expanded the msdp partition. But i am trying to understand what to do with the automaticly created meta volume. 

Since the primary shelf already has a meta partition for the msdp catalog with a lot of unused space, i do not see why another 10TB of the expansion shelf should be dedicated for msdp catalog. I would rather use these disks for the data volumes, but i understand i do not control the disks at raid level since this is a appliance.

Anyway, if the meta volume is supposed to be used for expanding the msdp catalog partition i think i have a issue.

In the appliance web console i am not able to view the msdp catalog partition, see attached screenshot. The resize options do not show the the unallocated meta space. Is it supposed to be like this? Perhaps msdp catalog resize only works from clish?

[andrew_mcc1 · Accepted solution]

As far as I recall MSDP Catalog partition arrangements are fixed for the N5330 - one per Storage Shelf. I doubt whether you can change this from the CLISH either. Note the MSDP Catalog is "hot" so best overall Appliance performance is strongly influenced by the number of disk spindles in those Partitions' RAID sets, this determines their minimum size. Also I suspect it will start to use the second one over time. BR Andrew

[AndHed]

Thank you for the quick reply Andrew.

I think you are correct, the expansion shelf meta disks are not configurable for customers and should be used for increasing space and performance of msdp catalog.

So you think the msdp catalog partition will automaticly get expanded to the new meta volume? Right now it shows as "in use" but with no allocations.

[AndHed]

Today i was able to expand the msdp catalog partition to the expansion shelf meta volume using appliance web gui. Perhaps it was just a web browser issue not displaying the msdp catalog information correctly.