SOLVED Adding new disks to my TrueNAS

[jordanthompson]

I currently have 8 2TB drives in my pool which is giving me 7.8TB of usable data.
I want to add another 4 2TB drives for additional space.
When I initially created the pool, I went with the suggested options and voila, I had a pool.
Unfortunately, I have no idea if it is RaidZ1, RaidZ2, etc., nor how the VDEV's are configured
* How do I find out what my RAID configuration is?
* How do I find what VDEV's were created?


I started to create a new pool and put the new drives into that, but it occurred to me that it may make more sense to add them to the existing pool (less overhead for redundancy?) if possible. I'm not terribly concerned about performance, but I am concerned about data loss (I am currently backing up to another NAS, and I have a couple of large drives in a single-disk pool that I backup and rotate periodically.)

Thanks in advance for your suggestions

 

[Samuel Tai]

Go to Storage->Pools, and click the gear icon. Pull down to Status, and it will display your pool topology.
The same information is available from shell via zpool status -a.

 

[jordanthompson]

Go to Storage->Pools, and click the gear icon. Pull down to Status, and it will display your pool topology.
The same information is available from shell via zpool status -a.

Thanks very much - I must have missed it earlier. This shows the RAID type, but not the VDEV configuration...

 

[jordanthompson]

From what I understand, it seems the best solution for me is to just create a new pool with the new drives. I don't see how adding to the existing pool (assuming that the initial pool was created as a single ZVOL and all original 8 drives were placed in it) will work unless I add another 8 drives and create a new ZVOL from them and add this new ZVOL to the existing pool.

 

[Jailer]

Thanks very much - I must have missed it earlier. This shows the RAID type, but not the VDEV configuration...

The command zpool status from the shell will show both the pool and vdev layout.

 

[Samuel Tai]

Thanks very much - I must have missed it earlier. This shows the RAID type, but not the VDEV configuration...

It does show the VDEV configuration. If I understand your pool, you have a RAIDZ2 pool with a single VDEV containing the 8 original drives. This is more evident in the CLI output. For example, here's my pool:

Code:

root@raven:~ # zpool status main

  pool: main
 state: ONLINE
  scan: scrub repaired 0B in 02:54:36 with 0 errors on Sat Nov 12 02:54:37 2022
config:

        NAME                                            STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        main                                            ONLINE       0     0     0 <- pool
          raidz2-0                                      ONLINE       0     0     0 <- 1st RAIDZ2 VDEV
            gptid/6bf321d8-50f6-11eb-8ce2-d0509901339e  ONLINE       0     0     0
            gptid/668bf9b0-dd87-11eb-8d8d-d0509901339e  ONLINE       0     0     0
            gptid/4a9155c5-5153-11eb-8ce2-d0509901339e  ONLINE       0     0     0
            gptid/6cc8089f-51ad-11eb-8ce2-d0509901339e  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

At the moment, you would need to add another 6 disks to be able to create a raidz2-1 VDEV in your pool. You could also, as you propose, destroy your pool and recreate as a 4-way stripe of 2-way mirrors, which would allow you to add another 2-disk VDEV to expand the pool to a 5-way stripe.

 

[jordanthompson]

Yup here's my output:

Code:

phong% zpool status pool
  pool: pool
 state: ONLINE
  scan: resilvered 18.0M in 00:00:04 with 0 errors on Tue Nov  1 17:57:41 2022
config:

        NAME                                            STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        pool                                            ONLINE       0     0     0
          raidz2-0                                      ONLINE       0     0     0
            gptid/b84ae8a3-0e68-11ed-959c-14dae9124c74  ONLINE       0     0     0
            gptid/5a57cde6-2316-11ed-9eea-14dae9124c74  ONLINE       0     0     0
            gptid/fd3b142d-b916-11ec-85a6-14dae9124c74  ONLINE       0     0     0
            gptid/76e34b28-ac3c-11ec-8473-14dae9124c74  ONLINE       0     0     0
            gptid/2fd48a3c-23c2-11ed-9eea-14dae9124c74  ONLINE       0     0     0
            gptid/3e962c04-0461-11ed-9bd2-14dae9124c74  ONLINE       0     0     0
            gptid/291369e9-0df9-11ed-959c-14dae9124c74  ONLINE       0     0     0
            gptid/24a59418-0616-11ed-af63-14dae9124c74  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

 

[jordanthompson]

It does show the VDEV configuration. If I understand your pool, you have a RAIDZ2 pool with a single VDEV containing the 8 original drives. This is more evident in the CLI output. For example, here's my pool:

Code:

root@raven:~ # zpool status main

  pool: main
 state: ONLINE
  scan: scrub repaired 0B in 02:54:36 with 0 errors on Sat Nov 12 02:54:37 2022
config:

        NAME                                            STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        main                                            ONLINE       0     0     0 <- pool
          raidz2-0                                      ONLINE       0     0     0 <- 1st RAIDZ2 VDEV
            gptid/6bf321d8-50f6-11eb-8ce2-d0509901339e  ONLINE       0     0     0
            gptid/668bf9b0-dd87-11eb-8d8d-d0509901339e  ONLINE       0     0     0
            gptid/4a9155c5-5153-11eb-8ce2-d0509901339e  ONLINE       0     0     0
            gptid/6cc8089f-51ad-11eb-8ce2-d0509901339e  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

At the moment, you would need to add another 6 disks to be able to create a raidz2-1 VDEV in your pool. You could also, as you propose, destroy your pool and recreate as a 4-way stripe of 2-way mirrors, which would allow you to add another 2-disk VDEV to expand the pool to a 5-way stripe.

Thanks Samuel Tai. I am just going to create a new pool with the 4 new drives for now. At some point in the future, I plan to move to TrueNAS SCALE and will consider just creating a new pool with all drives at that time - but as I understand it, it should be relatively easy to migrate my existing pools to the Linux version...