Almost Time for an Upgrade

[NewGeneral]

So I recently built a FreeNas box for personal and educational use. I currently have 5 1TB WD Red drives in a RaidZ2 for the main datasets (Media, Backups, Documents) and 1 ssd for the Jails Dataset. My main Volume (RaidZ2) is now over halfway full so I am planning on upgrading, even though I may not need to implement the upgrade until further down the line.

My goal is to install 6 New 1 or 2 TB hdds in an external enclosure (something like this: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA3913UN3425&ignorebbr=1), create a new volume on those drives, copy my datasets over to the new volume, then move the 5 hdds I am currently using plus 1 more (to get a proper RaidZ2 array) into the enclosure add them to the volume.

Basically, I want to get rid of my 1 RaidZ2 array of 5x1TB and get a new volume that is striped across 2 RaidZ2 arrays with 6x1TB, all while keeping my data. This will leave room for more SSD caching in the main case.

Does this sound feasible? Are there better options? Also, I am confused if or how iSCSI plays into this whole deal.

I am open to any suggestions about any part of this process.

 

[nightshade00013]

Well you will still likely need a SAS controller to connect to this enclosure plus I am not 100% sure the enclosure you are looking at will be a good fit with FreeNAS. This is especially true if the drives are not passed through and it is doing some fancy things behind the scenes. It may be better to move your current FreeNAS into a larger case and grab a SAS card and do everything internally. This will also be better in that you will not have a second power supply or cables run externally that will cause possible problems.

Otherwise your choice of creating a new pool with six drives and then adding a drive to the original pool as a second vDev sounds good. Though with two vDev's the spinning drives will probably do just fine holding the jails. Even a single 6 drive vDev will work wonders for a couple jails like Plex so you can save the SSD for some VM's or just find some other uses for it.

I use https://calomel.org/zfs_raid_speed_capacity.html to give a decent guestimate of the speed a couple vDev's can do. This is what a 2 vDev with 6 drives per in RaidZ2 can do with 4TB drives, smaller drives will perform slightly slower but it gives a good idea what you can achieve:

12x 4TB, 2 striped 6x raidz2, 30.1 TB, w=638MB/s , rw=105MB/s , r=990MB/s

The jails probably will not perform any better on an SSD, your only gain is high IOps and most jails will not see a benefit. Especially with FreeNAS and ZFS doing it's magic.

 

[NewGeneral]

Well you will still likely need a SAS controller to connect to this enclosure plus I am not 100% sure the enclosure you are looking at will be a good fit with FreeNAS. This is especially true if the drives are not passed through and it is doing some fancy things behind the scenes. It may be better to move your current FreeNAS into a larger case and grab a SAS card and do everything internally. This will also be better in that you will not have a second power supply or cables run externally that will cause possible problems.

How do I make sure whatever enclosure I pick will be a good fit for FreeNas? I am not 100% sold on that particular enclosure but I do want to use an external enclosure.

 

[nojohnny101]

but I do want to use an external enclosure.

Why do you want to use an external enclosure? As @nightshade00013 pointed out, external enclosures introduce more points of failure and can be finicky with connectivity issues if not done right. In my mind, they should only be used in specific circumstances and I don't believe situation warrants it. It might even be cheaper for you to just get a bigger case and a HBA card.

Would be interested to hear your reasoning.

 

[NewGeneral]

Why do you want to use an external enclosure? As @nightshade00013 pointed out, external enclosures introduce more points of failure and can be finicky with connectivity issues if not done right. In my mind, they should only be used in specific circumstances and I don't believe situation warrants it. It might even be cheaper for you to just get a bigger case and a HBA card.

Would be interested to hear your reasoning.

To be completely honest, I don't have a great reason. The main reason I built my FreeNas box in the first place was to learn how servers work. At the end of the day, I will not be in the least bit disappointed if I have to completely change cases, but I won't really learn anything from that. I've already built a server in a case, but I haven't expanded one server to two cases. Idk, it's a new challenge and I want to see how it goes.

With that being said, if it's not practical at all, then there's no point in doing. I don't need to waste money on an external enclosure that doesn't work, but I also don't want to have to buy another cpu, mobo, etc. and waste the first ones I used.

 

[danb35]

A SAS JBOD is a fairly straightforward way to do what you're looking for, though it can be expensive to find one. Something like this, for example. Just need a SAS HBA with at least one external port to connect to it, it uses SAS expanders and no other logic--it presents the bare drives to your OS, which is exactly what you want with ZFS. If your enclosure tries to be smarter than that--for example, if it does its own RAID management--you can be in for a world of hurt.

 

[nojohnny101]

but I also don't want to have to buy another cpu, mobo, etc. and waste the first ones I used.

No one ever said you had to do that. Use all your existing hardware, you're just making room for more drives.

You can go the external enclosure route, it would be a good learning opportunity. Most would see it is a overly complicated solution to a relatively simple case upgrade. To each his own though! Onward and upward!

 

[nightshade00013]

If you want a learning experience then I would suggest doing something like this
https://www.servethehome.com/sas-expanders-diy-cheap-low-cost-jbod-enclosures-raid/

With a PSU and SAS expander like the one in the link above and some breakout cables you could turn pretty much ANY case into an expander. Even having a motherboard may be over rated with the PCIe Extenders for bitcoin mining. They supply the card with power so all you need is a PSU. You will still need a SAS controller in the main FreeNAS preferably one with an external port.

 

[Stux]

I can't find a link at the moment but there are little controller boards that take care of hooking up the power buttons and PSU so that an ATX PSU will function in a case as a jbod without a motherboard.

You would normally do this to add a second disk shelf AFTER you have already converted your primary system to say a 24 bay 4U rackmount.

 

[Johnnie Black]

I can't find a link at the moment but there are little controller boards that take care of hooking up the power buttons and PSU so that an ATX PSU will function in a case as a jbod without a motherboard.

https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-cse-ptjbod-cb1-jbod-power-board-diy-jbod-chassis-made-easy/

 

[NewGeneral]

If you want a learning experience then I would suggest doing something like this
https://www.servethehome.com/sas-expanders-diy-cheap-low-cost-jbod-enclosures-raid/

With a PSU and SAS expander like the one in the link above and some breakout cables you could turn pretty much ANY case into an expander. Even having a motherboard may be over rated with the PCIe Extenders for bitcoin mining. They supply the card with power so all you need is a PSU. You will still need a SAS controller in the main FreeNAS preferably one with an external port.

https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-cse-ptjbod-cb1-jbod-power-board-diy-jbod-chassis-made-easy/

Y'all are awesome, this is exactly what I want to do!

 

[nightshade00013]

https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-cse-ptjbod-cb1-jbod-power-board-diy-jbod-chassis-made-easy/

Yeah that powers the PSU but you still will likely need to power an expander unless the backplane has one built in. Powering a PSU is as simple as shorting two pins, you just want to do it safely.

https://www.google.com/search?q=pow...e.1.69i57j0.9092j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

If I wanted to do it myself I would get an old AT flip switch or push button and take the MoBo header off a bad board and hook something up that way. Or just extend some power from the main computer and use one of these https://www.amazon.com/SUNKEE-Tripl...rd_wg=yWqT8&psc=1&refRID=68R8KNJVVPDW7C3QB0QJ After that powering fans is just plugging them into an adapter to hook up to a Molex connector. If the Supermicro board had the ability to not only power the backplane and turn on the PSU but also power a PCIe card it would be worth it and I am sure there is something out there that does exactly that but the OP also seems to want a bit of a challenge.

 

[Evertb1]

Y'all are awesome, this is exactly what I want to do!

Sounds a bit like this: "Why are you climbing that mountain?" "Because it is there!". That's what I have lost with computing since IT became my profession: experimenting and learning. It's all business and little fun now these days. It would be nice if you would take some time to give feedback on your results.

 

[NewGeneral]

Sounds a bit like this: "Why are you climbing that mountain?" "Because it is there!". That's what I have lost with computing since IT became my profession: experimenting and learning. It's all business and little fun now these days. It would be nice if you would take some time to give feedback on your results.

It will probably be a good while before I actually get to making this but I will definitely come back and let y'all know how it goes!