Removing a storage system

You can replace or decommission a storage system.

This task assumes that you have already launched the SAN Volume Controller Console.

During this procedure, you will add a new device, migrate data off of the storage system and remove the old MDisks.

An alternative to following this procedure is to migrate all of the virtual disks (VDisks) that are using storage in this MDisk group to another MDisk group. This allows you to consolidate the VDisks in a single or new group. However, you can only migrate one VDisk at a time. The procedure outlined below migrates all the data through a single command.

You can also use this procedure to remove or replace a single MDisk in a group. If an MDisk experiences a partial failure, such as a degraded array, and you can still read the data from the disk but cannot write to it, you can replace just that MDisk. Steps 1 and 3 detail how you can add or remove a single MDisk rather than a list of MDisks.

Perform the following steps to remove a storage system:

Add the new MDisks to the MDisk group by performing the following steps:
1. Click Work with Managed Disks > Managed Disks. The Viewing Managed Disk Groups panel is displayed.
2. Select the MDisk group that you want to add the new MDisks to and select Add MDisks from the task list. Click Go. The Adding Managed Disks to Managed Disk Group panel is displayed.
3. Select the new MDisks and click OK. The MDisk group should now contain both the old and new MDisks.
Ensure that the capacity of the new MDisks is the same or exceeds that of the old MDisks before proceeding to step 3.
Force the deletion of the old MDisks from the MDisk group to migrate all the data from the old MDisks to the new MDisks.
1. Click Work with Managed Disks > Managed Disks. The Viewing Managed Disk Groups panel is displayed.
2. Select the MDisk group that you want to add the new MDisks to and select Remove MDisks from the task list. Click Go. The Deleting Managed Disks from Managed Disk Group panel is displayed.
3. Select the old MDisks and click OK. The migration process begins.
  Note: The amount of time this process runs depends on the number and size of MDisks and the number and size of the VDisks that are using the MDisks.
Check the progress of the migration process by issuing the following command from the command-line interface (CLI): svcinfo lsmigrate
When all the migration tasks are complete, for example, the command in step 4 returns no output, verify that the MDisks are unmanaged.
Access the storage system and unmap the LUNs from the SAN Volume Controller ports.
Note: You can delete the LUNs if you no longer want to preserve the data that is on the LUNs.
Perform the following steps to have the cluster rescan the fibre-channel network:
1. Click Work with Managed Disks > Managed Disks.
2. Select Discover MDisks from the task list and click Go. The Discovering Managed Disks panel is displayed. The rescan discovers that the MDisks have been removed from the cluster and also rebalances MDisk access across the available controller device ports.
Verify that there are no MDisks for the storage system that you want to decommission.
Remove the storage system from the SAN so that the SAN Volume Controller ports can no longer access the storage system.