In today’s IT environment, the need for storage space grows constantly. Because it is
essential that this process be non-disruptive and not cause any downtime, the ability to
increase the available free capacity in an array without needing to restart the host system is
an important feature. This feature is called Dynamic Capacity Expansion (DCE).
With DS Storage Manager, it is possible to add new disk drives to the storage subsystem and
start the expansion procedure while the system remains fully operational. After the procedure
starts, it cannot be stopped. This procedure might have a performance impact because the
expansion process competes with normal disk access. When possible, this type of activity
should be performed when I/O activity is at a minimum. The new free capacity can be used to
create additional logical drives. Existing logical drives in the array do not increase in size as a
result of this operation. Logical drive increasing is called Dynamic Volume Expansion (DVE),
and is described in chapter 9.5.7, “Increase Capacity” on page 251.