How to extend SAP HANA Backup filesystem ONLINE (no downtime)

Question

Hello Experts,

We are planning to extend /hana/backup filesystem via Azure extend Disk > Size + performance > from P20 (512 GB) to P30 (1024 GB).

Note that the filesystem /hana/backup is for backup purposes only while the HANA Data and Logs are are in different filesystem. However, these are all hosted in the same VM (linux server).

This is our current plan:

Plan A:

1. In Azure Portal, Increase disk size
2. In Linux server, configure the filesystem to adapt new disk size (pvresize, lvextend, xfs_growfs)
3. Check that new FS size is reflected (df -kh)
4. Test run of Adhoc db backup, validate log backups are written

Please clarify:

Is it possible to extend disk ONLINE (without detaching the disk or shutting down the VM, following the plan above)? I heard that this is a new feature of Azure?

If not, kindly guide us what steps will be feasible in our current environment.

Thank you!

Angeli

Answer 1

Hi @Angeli Casabar

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Q&A platform.

You can expand azure VM's data disks only without deallocating your VM. This feature has the following limitations:

• Only supported for data disks.
• If a disk is 4 TiB or less, you should deallocate your VM and detach the disk before expanding it beyond 4 TiB. If a disk is already greater than 4 TiB, you can expand it without deallocating the VM and detaching the disk.
• Not supported for Ultra disks or Premium SSD v2 disks.
• Not supported for shared disks.
• Install and use either:
  • The latest Azure CLI
    • The latest Azure PowerShell module
      • The Azure portal
        • Or an Azure Resource Manager template with an API version that's 2021-04-01 or newer.
• Not available on some classic VMs. Use this script to get a list of classic VM SKUs that support expanding without downtime.

In your case, the disk is smaller in size, and If the /hana/backup is on OS disk, it is not possible expand the disk without downtime. You need to follow below document link for steps to expand the disk and resize the required partition where your filesystem resides.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/linux/expand-disks?tabs=suse#increase-the-size-of-the-os-disk

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