A few questions that will play a role in the answers:
- are you on the latest flare for the AX150i? (02.20.150.5.026 per EMC) -> if not plan on upgrading to this
- do you plan to move the data from all virtual disks to the new disks, or just move 1 or 2 virtual disks (or the data on them) to virtual disks on the new drives?
- indirectly related: if you were/are planning to move the data from all virtual disks to the new harddrives, what are you plans with the first 4 drives (these contain the OS for the storage system, so you can't just remove them or so)?
A somewhat-walkthrough based on the available info:
Assumptions:
- you're moving all data off of the first 4 drives
- you won't be using the first 4 drives for anything anymore (but won't be removing them as that would turn your SAN array into a doorstop)
- all 4 physical servers that are using storage on the array are running Windows (2003/2008) with Powerpath 4.5.x, 5.1.x, 5.2.x or 5.3.x.
- you have validated and tested backups of all your data
Suggested steps:
- create a new diskpool on the new drives and select the raid type you want to use
- create new virtual disks on this pool (at least 1 virtual disk for each server (servers CANNOT share a single virtual disk, unless you cluster the servers (and even then only 1 server at a time gets to access that disk))
- assign each virtual disk to the server it is intended for (you can do this during the virtual disk creation wizard as well)
- go to each server and tell it to rescan for hardware changes in the device manager
- go to each server and in disk management verify you can see the new disk
- initialize the disk (do not convert to dynamic disk (the Windows 2003 wizard asks for this, but defaults with this option unchecked)
- if you're running Windows 2003 SP1 or later, right click the disk (not the partition area) and select to convert to GPT
- create a partition, assign it a drive letter and format the disk
- on each server copy the data from the 'old' disk to the new disk (drag&drop or use a 3rd party utility (but NOT dynamic disk mirroring))
- verify the data is good on the new disk
Now to remove the old disk:
- optional: delete the partition in Windows and if desired you can then change the drive letter on the new disk to be what the old disk had
- shut down the server
- go into Navisphere and destroy the virtual disk in question
You then do this for each server and it's 'old' virtual disk.
After this you could re-use the newly available disk space for one of the existing servers or create disk space for a 5th server.
I suspect you'll have questions as I made several assumptions and didn't have all the information I needed (didn't have a full understanding of your intentions).