Source
r/truenas•
BrownNote

Question about path to upgrade to larger drives

FreeNAS

I have a very simple setup - a 16 bay SuperMicro running FreeNAS 11.3U5 currently with 2TB disks as my central home storage. It's just file storage, and nothing fancy about it.

I've started a process of upgrading the disks to 8TB (following the procedure here, but as I'll need 16 this is an expensive pursuit all at once so I'm slowly purchasing them and replacing the 2TB drives. However, I have a set of 8 4TB drives from my previous machine. Could I use these as a mid-point?

Basically, once I have 8 of the drives at 8TB, start replacing the remaining ones with 4TB leaving me with 4x16 (64) TB of storage before redundancy and then eventually finishing the upgrade to 8x16 (128) TB afterward?

Just want to make sure there's no strange interaction with the pool size increasing to a larger size but still not the largest possible for some disks.

Thanks!

Posted Aug 1, 2023, 11:43 AM UTC

17
uk_sean•

How is the pool configured? The answer to that defines what effect things will have.

However in general you could use the 4TB drives - but that will limit that all drives in that vdev to 4TB

1
BrownNoteOP•

Sorry, which configuration are you asking about? If it’s about autoexpand being enabled then yes I have that set. If it’s about redundancy it’s raidZ2.

The 4TB/disk limit is expected yeah, I’m just looking at it as an option to get some more space sooner rather than having to wait for any increase at all until I buy enough 8TB drives.

1
uk_sean•

Can you post a zpool status in code block please?

1
BrownNoteOP•
  pool: freenas-boot
 state: ONLINE
  scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0 days 00:06:15 with 0 errors on Thu Jul 27 03:51:15 2023
config:

	NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
	freenas-boot  ONLINE       0     0     0
	  da16p2    ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

  pool: pool1
 state: ONLINE
status: One or more devices has experienced an unrecoverable error.  An
	attempt was made to correct the error.  Applications are unaffected.
action: Determine if the device needs to be replaced, and clear the errors
	using 'zpool clear' or replace the device with 'zpool replace'.
   see: http://illumos.org/msg/ZFS-8000-9P
  scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0 days 06:42:04 with 0 errors on Tue Aug  1 10:42:05 2023
config:

	NAME                                            STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
	pool1                                           ONLINE       0     0     0
	  raidz2-0                                      ONLINE       0     0     0
	    gptid/1c612bbf-8c5e-11ed-bd2f-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    gptid/1c97e03f-8c5e-11ed-bd2f-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    gptid/1c5d64a5-8c5e-11ed-bd2f-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     1     0
	    gptid/580dcaba-2c08-11ee-bcdf-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    gptid/1de7e6d1-8c5e-11ed-bd2f-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    gptid/1cefdf3b-8c5e-11ed-bd2f-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    gptid/1d5c0d85-8c5e-11ed-bd2f-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    gptid/1eb84a68-8c5e-11ed-bd2f-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    gptid/1eecfe92-8c5e-11ed-bd2f-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    gptid/1e3a4bb0-8c5e-11ed-bd2f-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    gptid/1fa3bf05-8c5e-11ed-bd2f-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    gptid/1f6801e6-8c5e-11ed-bd2f-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    gptid/202b0712-8c5e-11ed-bd2f-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    gptid/20ac192c-8c5e-11ed-bd2f-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    gptid/20d75e14-8c5e-11ed-bd2f-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    gptid/20bf7a1d-8c5e-11ed-bd2f-0cc47abb177a  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

​

The one error can be disregarded - it's a disk I know is starting to fail and will be replacing with one of the 8TBs today.

Thanks!

1
uk_sean•

Ouch - thats a 16 Wide Z2 - and whilst doable is not really reccomended due to excessive rebuild times. But at least its Z2.

If you swap out all the disks with 8TB, with a single 4TB then all the 8TB will be treated as 4TB disks until you swap the 4 for an 8.

So yes - you can use 4's as a stop gap - but using just one will limit any 8's you have to 4TBs as the vdev is based on the size of the smallest disk

1
NeedSomeHelpHere4785•

If you can work it out I would take the drives I had and start a mirrored pool and migrate to it if you are planning on slowly adding. Its so much easier to make changes. I.E. if you have 8 8TB drives that gives you 4 Vdevs with 8TB each with 1:1 redundancy and 32TB of useable space. Once you've done that you can add and replace your drives in combinations of 2 anyway you want. It cost you capacity but it makes up for it in flexibility.

1