We have an F760 with two shelves of 72 GB drives. There are two volumes of five drives each. We now face the decision to expand one of the volumes or create a new three-drive volume, leaving one hot spare.
If we create a new volume, we lose yet another large chunk of space for parity. (We also get a small number of spindles, but performance hasn't proven to be a problem in our situation.)
If we expand an existing volume, we get an uncomfortably large volume. The volumes are already 215 GB.
We're leaning toward the latter resolution, because disk usage inexorably increases, and purchasing more hardware is not an option even on the horizon.
How have others dealt with these matters? Do such large volumes entail problems beyond the obviously longer backup and restore times? Are we overlooking any major issues?
--Brian L. Brush Senior Systems Administrator Paradyne Corporation