Removing a storage system

You can replace or decommission a storage system.

During this procedure, you add a 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 volumes that are using storage in this pool to another pool. This procedure consolidates the volumes in a single or new pool. However, you can move one volume at a time. The following procedure migrates all the data through a single command.

You can also use this procedure to remove or replace a single MDisk in a pool. 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 2 detail how you can add or remove a single MDisk rather than a list of MDisks.

Complete the following steps to remove a storage system:

  1. Add the new MDisks to the pool by completing the following steps:
    1. Click Pools > MDisks by Pool.
    2. Select the pool that you want to add the new MDisks to and select Add Storage.
    3. In the Assign Storage wizard, select External.
      Select a storage system and the MDisks that you want to add. Ensure that you add the number of MDisks so that the capacity of the new MDisks is the same or exceeds the capacity of the old MDisks. Click Assign.
  2. Force the deletion of the old MDisks from the pool to migrate all the data from the old MDisks to the new MDisks.
    1. Click Pools > MDisks by Pool.
    2. Expand the pool that you added the new MDisks to and right-click the MDisks to remove and select Remove.
      Click Yes to migrated data from the removed MDisks to the MDisks that you added to the pool.
  3. When all the migration tasks are complete, verify that the MDisks are unmanaged by selecting Pools > MDisks by Pool and expand Unassigned MDisk to display all unmanaged MDisks.
    Ensure that all the MDisks that were removed are listed.
  4. Access the storage system and unmap the LUNs from the system ports.
    Note: If you no longer want to preserve the data that is on the LUNs, you can delete the LUNs.
  5. Complete the following steps to have the system rescan the Fibre Channel network:
    1. Click Pools > MDisks by Pool.
    2. Select Discover MDisks from the Actions menu.
  6. Verify that the storage system that you want to decommission has no MDisks.
  7. Remove the storage system from the SAN so that the ports can no longer access the storage system.
Parent topic: Managing external storage system