Upgrade HP DL380 G7 RAID from 146GB to 1TB SSD

     The project is to upgrade HP DL380 G7 RAID from 8 146GB SAS hard disk to 8 1TB SATA SSD.

     First I downloaded and installed  Macrium Reflect 7, then created rescue USB thumb drive, boot HP DL380 G7 from the USB drive, imaging the disk to a Samba network disk.

     The raid controller is HP Smart Array G6 controller which support only logical disk but does not support logical volume.

     The BIOS does not support UEFI boot. So it can not boot from GPT disk.

     The logical disk is 7 TB after upgraded. After I used Reflect to restored image file to the 7 TB logical disk, the disk changed back to MBR disk. But MBR disk format only support 2 TB total disk space.

   

     I tried to use Mini Tools partition manager to convert the logical disk from MBR to GPT. The tool converted the disk to GPT successfully. But it kept a MBR partition protect on the partition. So the tool can not resize the partition to the full disk space.

     I tried use SUSE YasT  Partitioner. It can not resize the partition neither.

     All of them do not give any error message.

     I have to use a small SATA SSD disk to replace the CD-ROM, format it as MBR disk and install the a Linux OS on it. After boot from the disk, I installed gdisk and use it to convert logical disk to GPT. Then use SUSE YasT Partitioner to resize the partition to full size. Then I copied files from old disk's /boot folder to override the MBR boot disk's /boot folder,  modified menu.lst in the /boot/grub folder:

from
gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/message

to
gfxmenu (hd0,0)/boot/message

from
root (hd0,1)

to
root (hd0,0)

from   
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32.12-0.7-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/cciss-3600508b1001c6fb515016b20e40a96c8-part2 showopts ide=nodma apm=off noresume edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 nomodeset x11failsafe

to

    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32.12-0.7-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/cciss-3600508b1001ca65c6e28fa9f1c1c5345-part1 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_INTEL_SSDSC2KW5PHLA846003NQ512DGN-part3 splash=silent crashkernel=256M-:128M showopts

Because the new RAID logical disk's ID changed, and I created swap partition after root partition, I had to modify old /etc/fstab

from

#/dev/disk/by-id/cciss-3600508b1001c6fb515016b20e40a96c8-part1 swap                 swap       defaults              0 0

to

/dev/disk/by-id/cciss-3600508b1001ca65c6e28fa9f1c1c5345-part2 swap                 swap       defaults              0 0

from

#/dev/disk/by-id/cciss-3600508b1001c6fb515016b20e40a96c8-part2 /                 ext3       defaults              0 0

to

/dev/disk/by-id/cciss-3600508b1001ca65c6e28fa9f1c1c5345-part1 / ext3 defaults 0 0

     After reboot the machine, everything goes back to the exactly same as I upgraded the disk to 7 TB. The small MBR SATA SSD disk plays only as a boot disk.

(For my recorder, to image 1 TB disk to USB 2 or over the 1 GB network takes about 6 hour. Restore the image takes about 3 hour. Use tar to clone takes about 17 hour.)

The path is:

1, Use Reflect image RAID.

2, Replace the SAS with SSD.

3, Restore image.

4, Install a MBR SATA SSD and install same OS on it.(cheap USB thumb drive would corrupt in six month to one year.)

5, Install gdisk and convert RAID logical disk to GPT, then expand the size.

6, Copy /boot from Logical disk to MBR SATA SSD /boot folder.

7, Modify menu.lst in /boot/grub in MBR SATA SSD disk.

8. Modify /etc/fstab to use RAID logical disk as root and swap.