3 Separate Sata Controllers 3 Separate Volumes Can I do this

[Subwoofer Jesus]

3 Separate Sata Controllers (3 Separate Z Volumes labeled a1,a2,a3) I did not make it one large volume as I thought this would be better to add and delete different size drives and keep the data

- The Setup is 2 - 1TB drives 2- 250GB drives and 2- 80GB drives all are striped.
What I want to do over time is add 1TB drives to (a1) one at a time when I can afford it.

Can I do this in the 2-1TB volume (a1) as it is a separate vol without losing data and increasing the VOL 1TB at a time until I can copy and delete the other volumes and end up with 1 super large (a1)Volume

I hope I explained it ok, I'm a new user at home on a budget. If there is a better way Please Do Explain.

 

[Ericloewe]

If you add vdevs to existing pools, they'll be striped with the other vdevs in the pool.


http://forums.freenas.org/index.php...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

I recommend you read Cyberjock's guide (follow the link).

 

[danb35]

So volume a1 is 2x 1 TB drives striped (total capacity ~ 2 TB), a2 is 2x 250 GB drives striped (total capacity ~ 500 GB), and a3 is 2x 80 GB drives striped (total capacity ~ 160 GB)? And you want to occasionally add 1 TB drives to a1 to increase its capacity? If this is all correct, then yes, what you're proposing is possible--but beware, here be dragons.

The fundamental problem with striped volumes is that when (not if) a single drive fails, you lose all the data in that volume with no realistic hope of recovery. The more drives you add to a volume, the greater your chances of a failure. So, unless this data just really isn't very important to you, you really should consider a different arrangement.

Edit: There's no need at all to keep the volumes on separate SATA controllers.

 

[Subwoofer Jesus]

So volume a1 is 2x 1 TB drives striped (total capacity ~ 2 TB), a2 is 2x 250 GB drives striped (total capacity ~ 500 GB), and a3 is 2x 80 GB drives striped (total capacity ~ 160 GB)? And you want to occasionally add 1 TB drives to a1 to increase its capacity? If this is all correct, then yes, what you're proposing is possible--but beware, here be dragons.

The fundamental problem with striped volumes is that when (not if) a single drive fails, you lose all the data in that volume with no realistic hope of recovery. The more drives you add to a volume, the greater your chances of a failure. So, unless this data just really isn't very important to you, you really should consider a different arrangement.

Edit: There's no need at all to keep the volumes on separate SATA controllers.

Thank You for your reply I need at least 3 drives to make a raid z2 (I think that's the name) but you see the mother board only has 4 sata ports card 1 has 2 sata ports and card 2 has 4
when you look GUI if you have only 2 drives you can only mirror or stripe on each controller I would like to use a lot of drives adding slowly 1 TB drives at a time
I read the manual How can I take all those six drives on separate controller's and make 1 raid z2 and then on large windows volume this is the only way I can add and remove drives right without losing data if one fails or is replaced

 

[joeschmuck]

You don't want to mirror or stripe using the controller cards as "the controller". You need to do some serious reading of the user manual, you are missing a lot of information by skipping this step. Do not use the cards to create a RAID, FreeNAS works much better and prefers to handle creating RAIDs on it's own.

What is your overall objective for your NAS? Do you want a specific capacity, care about how safe the data is, etc... Most people should run a RAIDZ2 which should consist of 4 or more hard drives. You can start with all the drives you have and create a RAIDZ2 and then upgrade (replace) each drive one at a time with a larger drive when you can afford it. The entire pool (vdev) size will be the size of the smallest hard drive, with that in mind I would replace the 80GB drives first, then the 500GB drives, and lastly the 1TB drives. Once the last one is replaced your pool will automatically show the full size of each drive. And this is the best way to minimize cost vs. capacity.

It's your call. Please read the manual though.

 

[danb35]

As joeschmuck said, your controller cards shouldn't be involved in any way in your RAID configuration. There is no reason for you to use three controllers--your motherboard's onboard ports plus one of your two controllers will handle all six of your drives, and FreeNAS doesn't care which controller any given disk is on. Let FreeNAS handle all the RAID arrangements.

RAIDZ2 requires a minimum of four drives. You could create a single RAIDZ2 configuration with your six disks; in that case, its total capacity would be (6 - 2) x 80 GB = 320 GB--it's based on the capacity of the smallest disk in the set, which in this case would be the 80 GB drives. If you later replaced the two 80 GB drives with 1 TB drives, your pool capacity would increase to (6 - 2) x 250 GB = 1 TB. If you then replaced the two 250 GB drives with 1 TB drives, your pool capacity would increase to (6 - 2) x 1 TB = 4 TB.

Another way to set this up would be to mirror your 1 TB drives, mirror your 250 GB drives, and mirror your 80 GB drives--and combine those into one pool. Its capacity would then be ~ 1.3 TB. You could later add more mirrors (of whatever capacity you wanted) to the pool, and/or replace the smaller drives with larger ones (one at a time). In the short term, this gives you more capacity. In the long term, though, if you replace the four smaller drives with 1 TB drives, you'd have a total pool capacity of 3 TB rather than 4 TB.

Be aware that many SATA controllers don't work too well with FreeNAS. One that seems very popular is the IBM M1015 with the firmware reflashed to IT mode; this can be had on eBay for around $100, and gives 8 SATA ports. This card plus your motherboard would handle up to 12 drives, which should cover you for quite a while.

As Joe said, please read the manual. Also, review cyberjock's excellent PowerPoint presentation here: http://forums.freenas.org/index.php...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/. They should get you pointed in the right direction.

 

[Subwoofer Jesus]

You don't want to mirror or stripe using the controller cards as "the controller". You need to do some serious reading of the user manual, you are missing a lot of information by skipping this step. Do not use the cards to create a RAID, FreeNAS works much better and prefers to handle creating RAIDs on it's own.

What is your overall objective for your NAS? Do you want a specific capacity, care about how safe the data is, etc... Most people should run a RAIDZ2 which should consist of 4 or more hard drives. You can start with all the drives you have and create a RAIDZ2 and then upgrade (replace) each drive one at a time with a larger drive when you can afford it. The entire pool (vdev) size will be the size of the smallest hard drive, with that in mind I would replace the 80GB drives first, then the 500GB drives, and lastly the 1TB drives. Once the last one is replaced your pool will automatically show the full size of each drive. And this is the best way to minimize cost vs. capacity.

It's your call. Please read the manual though.

Thanks once again I did a lot of reading and figured out I had to delete the raids that come with the cards by default and set both cards to Compliancey something :) and I have to use all the same capacity drives on each card so I used 6 x 250 gig drives split on 2 controller cards 4 and 2 port sata cards
this is so that FREENAS can perform a software raid Now I get just shy of 1 TB with the 6 drives which is fine now I have run into another
challenge when making the zvol all goes well but estimated size needs an input and Im not sure what it is so again off to do more reading :)
once im finished Im going to write a plain and simple how to do on this ALSO I found out that my motherboard SATA controller cant go
in Complienety thingy or JBOD mode so it can show all 4 ports as one in FREENAS but I will tackle that later as I go along THANKS AGAIN danb35 :)

 

[danb35]

Why are you making a zvol? And why are the punctuation keys missing from your keyboard?

 

[Ericloewe]

Why are you making a zvol? And why are the punctuation keys missing from your keyboard?

He kept on talking in one long incredibly unbroken sentence moving from topic to topic so that no one had the chance to interrupt it was really quite hypnotic.

 

[joeschmuck]

Also you might want to post what your hardware is as well.