Autoexpand is on but not expanding

[Adrien Clark]

Hi all,

I recently took over a system that I maintain for a small sixth-form college.

In the first week that I took over the FreeNAS one of the drive fails, so as you do you look into it. When I did they were running RAID1 with 2x 500GB drive which were nearly full.

I asked for 2x 1TB Red drives to replace them. Using the replacement hard drive guide and expansion guide I replaced the two. (Never having used FreeNAS before mind you.)

Once the replacement was done I check the storage capacity of the pool and it still only gave 500GB. Did a little troubleshooting to see what could be the issue but haven't found anything as of yet.

I am using FreeNAS 9.3 Stable
AMD Athlon Dual core
4GB memory (Maxed out)

Before people go on about why aren't you using a proper server for this instead, it is because that the school doesn't have any money to spend on a server and rely on hand-me from another school.

Kind regards,

Adrien


EDIT: Found the ZFS dump for the system

 

[Mirfster]

Looks to me like it has the space:

Code:

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+  ZFS Pools  +
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
NAME  SIZE  ALLOC  FREE  EXPANDSZ  FRAG  CAP  DEDUP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
YMCA  928G  417G  511G  -  15%  44%  1.00x  ONLINE  /mnt

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+  ZFS Datasets and ZVols  +
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
NAME  USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
YMCA  417G  482G  417G  /mnt/YMCA

Got a screenshot you can share?

 

[Adrien Clark]

It looks that way but it isn't actually showing up on the iSCSI mount that I have on the Server.

EDIT: YMCANAS is the iSCSI

 

[Mirfster]

Hmm... iSCSI eh... Have you restarted the iSCSI service?

Didn't want to harp on the system having 1/2 the minimal RAM, nor even inquiring about system specs (got ECC RAM at least?); knowing that you inherited the Server. But, man now knowing that you are running iSCSI... It is getting tough... :p

 

[Adrien Clark]

I haven't done that yet, I'll now have to wait till the half term to do anything like that... Plus take a backup of the Data. (Yes, no backups). :(

I know, reading the spec list for FreeNAS just made me want to cry with the machine.

Unfortunately not, the FreeNAS is an old old old HP Proliant tower PC. So I believe DDR2 for the FreeNAS. On the plus side the server is ECC. Well it is used for the students and staff home area. Even though most work off memory sticks themselves.

In regards to the iSCSI restart, we have had a few power issues so it has had a few restarts so in essence it has restarted itself.

 

[Adrien Clark]

Also looked under zpool export import function. It looks like that might do the trick according to some other guides I've looked into.

What do you think?

 

[Mirfster]

Not thinking that is needed. However, I am not an iSCSI guru; so others may provide better insight. I am keeping steps simple... So how about on the client end? Have you either rebooted there or restarted the service (may have as well since you mentioned power issues...)?

 

[Adrien Clark]

Not thinking that is needed

I'll hold back on that at the moment.

Your help is much appreciated as FreeNAS is new to me. Reading the guides are straight forward but providing a RONSEAL approach this time around with the autoexpand.

Yeah, all the systems have had their reboot, including all servers. So the iSCSI shouldn't be an issue. Though should only affect the server that has the iSCSI attached to it and nothing on the client end. As they are basic windows shares.

EDIT:

Code:

NAME           SIZE  ALLOC   FREE  EXPANDSZ   FRAG    CAP  DEDUP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
YMCA           928G   417G   511G         -    15%    44%  1.00x  ONLINE  /mnt

Code:

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+                             ZFS Datasets and ZVols                             +
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
NAME                                                   USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
YMCA                                                   417G   482G   417G  /mnt/YMCA
YMCA/.system                                          4.33M   482G  2.22M  legacy
YMCA/.system/cores                                     792K   482G   792K  legacy
YMCA/.system/rrd-5a1e22f5286d453ca9fcfb104651ce47       96K   482G    96K  legacy
YMCA/.system/samba4                                    308K   482G   308K  legacy
YMCA/.system/syslog-5a1e22f5286d453ca9fcfb104651ce47   968K   482G   968K  legacy

With looking at this, the allocation is only 417GB which does leave the 511G alone. So that part of space would be not used. What I would need to look into doing is reallocating the remaining space. Any ideas on that?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

My guess is you just need to grow the LUN: http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_sharing.html#growing-luns

 

[gpsguy]

I'd get a backup now, rather than flirt with disaster.

While FreeNAS requires a minimum of 8GB of RAM for general use, if iSCSI is enabled, the recommendation jumps to a minimum of 32GB. And, the recommendation is to use no more than 50% of your storage. Do a forum search for iSCSI and user: jgreco

Plus take a backup of the Data. (Yes, no backups).

 

[jgreco]

#dontblamejgreco

 

[SweetAndLow]

It also sounds like you are sharing this zvol with multiple workstations. You can't do that with iscsi. To share files with multiple people you need to use cifs.

 

[gpsguy]

never

I was just giving the OP a nudge in the right direction to learn more about using iSCSI on FreeNAS.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Adrien Clark]

Sorry for the slow reply, was on holiday for the last week without access to the computer.

You can't do that with iscsi

Not even with the Windows File Sharing feature? It is one iSCSI just with folder shares.

I'll get a backup of the data later on when I head down.

The picture attached show what I would see as a ZFS structure but without any zvols. If I am correct. As the volume shows only 511GB available without any expansion available. If I am wrong please correct me :)

I have been looking at jgreco's post and I haven't come across anything that is similar to the issue that I am having.

 

[pirateghost]

Sorry for the slow reply, was on holiday for the last week without access to the computer.


Not even with the Windows File Sharing feature? It is one iSCSI just with folder shares.

I'll get a backup of the data later on when I head down.

The picture attached show what I would see as a ZFS structure but without any zvols. If I am correct. As the volume shows only 511GB available without any expansion available. If I am wrong please correct me :)

I have been looking at jgreco's post and I haven't come across anything that is similar to the issue that I am having.

With iscsi, FreeNAS has no idea what's on that disk. It's presented as a block level device to the OS that attaches to it. There is no way for it to understand you want to expand it.

Unless your Windows setup is cluster aware, you cannot access the data from more than one machine at a time.

 

[jgreco]

Not even with the Windows File Sharing feature?

You can export an iSCSI volume to a Windows box, which can then use it for whatever it wants, including having the Windows box turn around and share that out on the network.

This is probably stupid-to-do, since CIFS on the FreeNAS box is a better way to do that, but you can do that.

It is one iSCSI just with folder shares.

There's no such thing. iSCSI is strictly a block access protocol. It's like an external USB disk, just a bunch of disk blocks on top of which you could put a NTFS or Linux or other type of filesystem. Unlike a USB disk, you can potentially attach it to several machines. The danger there is that if you go and format it as NTFS, and then export that iSCSI device to multiple hosts, NTFS isn't a cluster-aware filesystem and it will shred itself. FreeNAS will happily honor all the requests from all the clients and do exactly what is asked. It's NTFS that has no idea how to cope with that.

More reading:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...erent-content-to-win-servers.7625/#post-30501

Also follow the link in *that* post.

 

[Adrien Clark]

Unless your Windows setup is cluster aware, you cannot access the data from more than one machine at a time.

Thanks for this pirateghost.

There's no such thing. iSCSI is strictly a block access protocol. It's like an external USB disk, just a bunch of disk blocks on top of which you could put a NTFS or Linux or other type of filesystem. Unlike a USB disk, you can potentially attach it to several machines. The danger there is that if you go and format it as NTFS, and then export that iSCSI device to multiple hosts, NTFS isn't a cluster-aware filesystem and it will shred itself. FreeNAS will happily honor all the requests from all the clients and do exactly what is asked. It's NTFS that has no idea how to cope with that.

More reading:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...erent-content-to-win-servers.7625/#post-30501

Also follow the link in *that* post.

Thanks jgreco. That clears things up for me.

Like I have said before hand. It is an inherited system that I am having to use with what they setup before hand. With not a lot of experience with FreeNAS as well, trying to learn as I go along with the process.

For the use that it gets, it doesn't get that many hits a day. With only me using it a lot of the time.

For a quick fix to get all the available, would backing it up and then recreating the iSCSI then copying it back onto the system. Then later on start on a system that uses the CIFS on FreeNAS for all the students and staff? Would that work better for the purpose of the NAS system?

EDIT:
I know you keep on going on about multiple iSCSI attachments. What I am doing is a iSCSI to the server and then shares from that one connection. This shouldn't create the issues that would of been caused by the block level write. Would it not?

 

[gpsguy]

I suggested you read some of jgreco's posts about iSCSI. If you did, you see that it's not recommended to use more than 50% of the total storage when used with iSCSI.

You currently have 417GB in use with 482GB free. How much of the additional space we're you intending to use?

I understand that you've inherited a machine that is inadequate for running FreeNAS. Note that running FreeNAS on only 4GB of RAM is risky.

 

[Adrien Clark]

You currently have 417GB in use with 482GB free. How much of the additional space we're you intending to use?

What I am doing is adding another Terabyte to the file server. So It'll be just below the 50% use. They don't use that much space as it was only 500GB drive and no one saves that often to the network. Only to back up every now and then.

Yes, I know but there is no room to upgrade until I either get more hand me downs or they suddenly get some money to allow me to create a new a new NAS drive with more than enough RAM and disk space ratio. Then I'll be able to do some thing about it.

 

[gpsguy]

What do you mean by "another Terabyte"?

You started with a pair of 500GB drives in a mirror. You replaced both of them with 1TB drives, so now you have a pair of 1TB drives in a mirror. And, you are using 400+GB.