Preparing a system for LPAR.

[rob@xxxxxxxxx]

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We are in the process of preparing a system for LPAR.  While doing this we
are removing some older racks and putting on some newer ones.  We also
have lots of disk space.  We want to move some of our existing disk drives
from our existing partition to one of the two new partitions.  The newer
racks will have more drives.

Can disks be removed from a system while it is in use?  I know that you
can replace a disk from a raid drive, but removing is a totally different
animal.

We have 165 disk units running at 77%.  A total space of 2.138TB.  Leaving
us with 491gb free.

Rack 6 has:
twelve 6607 drives
eight 6717 drives
Rack 7 has
sixteen 6607  drives
12 * 4gb = 48gb
8 * 8gb = 64gb
16 * 4gb = 64gb
total = 176gb

Can we remove all these drives from use without any downtime?  If so, how?

While we expect that doing this upgrade may result in a few short periods
of downtime we are trying to minimize it.  We are not at the point,
however, where we would freak out on any downtime.

Please, no debates on why we should keep these older drives to increase
our number of disk arms.

Rob Berendt
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin