E. Expanding the DGX Station RAID Array

After adding SSDs to the DGX Station, you must expand the RAID array to add the new SSDs to the array. The procedure for expanding the RAID array is the same for all supported RAID levels.

Add the extra SSDs to the DGX Station as explained in DGX Station User Guide.

Because expanding a RAID array risks loss of data, ensure that you have a backup of data on the array that you want to preserve.

This task requires sudo privileges.

Use standard Linux operating system commands to expand the DGX Station RAID array.

  1. Obtain the device IDs of the SSDs that were added by searching for 1.8 T drives that aren’t mounted in the output from the lsblk command.
    $ lsblk

    In the following example, the device IDs of the SSDs that were added are sde, sdf, sdg, and sdh. 

    $ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0   1.8T  0 disk
|_sda1   8:1    0   487M  0 part  /boot/efi
|_sda2   8:2    0   1.8T  0 part  /
sdb      8:16   0   1.8T  0 disk
|_md0    9:0    0   5.2T  0 raid0 /raid
sdc      8:32   0   1.8T  0 disk
|_md0    9:0    0   5.2T  0 raid0 /raid
sdd      8:48   0   1.8T  0 disk
|_md0    9:0    0   5.2T  0 raid0 /raid
sde      8:64   0   1.8T 0 disk
sdf      8:80   0   1.8T 0 disk
sdg      8:96   0   1.8T 0 disk
sdh      8:112  0   1.8T 0 disk
  2. Add the SSDs that you added to the DGX Station to the RAID array.
    $ sudo mdadm --add raid-device-path ssd-device-paths
    raid-device-path
    The device path of the RAID array, for example, /dev/md0.
    ssd-device-paths
    A space-separated list of the device paths of the SSDs that you added, in which each path is of the form /dev/device-id.

    This example adds the SSDs with device paths /dev/sde, /dev/sdf, /dev/sdg, and /dev/sdh to the RAID array with device path /dev/md0. 

    sudo mdadm --add /dev/md0 /dev/sde /dev/sdf /dev/sdg /dev/sdh
  3. Increase the number of devices in the RAID array to 7. 
    $ sudo mdadm --grow --raid-devices=7 raid-device-path
    raid-device-path
    The device path of the RAID array, for example, /dev/md0.
    Note: Increasing the number of devices in the RAID array to 7 may require several hours or even longer. If the system crashes, is shut down, or is rebooted while the number of devices on the array is being increased, all data that was on the array is erased.

    This example increases the number of devices in the RAID array with device path /dev/md0 to 7. 

    $ sudo mdadm --grow --raid-devices=7 /dev/md0
  4. Resize the file system that resides on the RAID array to use the additional physical space in the array.
    $ sudo resize2fs raid-device-path
    raid-device-path
    The device path of the RAID array, for example, /dev/md0.

    This example resizes the file system that resides on the RAID array with device path /dev/md0. 

    $ sudo resize2fs /dev/md0
The RAID array is expanded with its existing RAID level. The data on the array is preserved, even if the array is a RAID 0 array.