Different drive sizes, same valume

[g:String]

Hi all.
I'm trying to set up a raidZ3 using 7 drives: 3 x 1.5TB and 4 x 2TB. I understand that my 2TB will be used as 1.5TB, but that's what i can afford right now.
Anyone know how I can do this (freeNas 9.1.1)?
Many thanks

 

[joeschmuck]

You simply create the pool using all 7 drives and make sure you set it up as a RAIDZ3. All your drives will be treated as 1.5TB drives as you said however once you replace each 1.5TB drive with a 2TB drive (or larger) then the pool will expand. You must do this properly and not replace all the drives at once. Read and ask before you do the upgrade, if you do the upgrade. And why a Z3?

 

[g:String]

That was fast, thanks!
My problem: I can not see where I can make those pools!
As for why Z3 - the extra redundancy, of course :)

 

[Dusan]

Unfortunately this will not work in 9.1.1. FreeNAS 9.1.1 will not allow you to create a vdev out of drives with different sizes :(. As a workaround you can boot FreeNAS 8.3.2, create the pool and switch back to 9.1.1.

 

[g:String]

Dung! What a hassle! I hope it'll be fixed.
Anyway - thanks, Dusan.

 

[SweetAndLow]

So does this also mean that you can't upgrade your drives to larger ones? Example 4x3tb upgraded to 4x4tb. Because if I understand correctly you are supposed to swap out one drive at a time leaving you with a heterogenous drive layout.

 

[Dusan]

There's no problem upgrading drives. It's just that the FN 9.1.1 ZFS Volume Manager is very strictly enforcing the same size rule when creating a new pool.

 

[joeschmuck]

So that's the volume manager, what about the CLI?

 

[joeschmuck]

Would "zpool create pool_name raidz3 ada0 ada1 ada2 ada3 ada4 ada5 ada6" work, assuming the drive names are ada0 through ada6 and pool_name is the name of the pool you are creating.

 

[SweetAndLow]

If this cmd looks correct then your answer is no. da6 is only 5G and the rest are 10G
[root@freenas ~]# zpool create tank raidz /dev/da1 /dev/da2 /dev/da3 /dev/da6
invalid vdev specification
use '-f' to override the following errors:
raidz contains devices of different sizes

 

[cyberjock]

It sure does work. It's the GUI's volume manager that's being the PITA. That's why I wrote a ticket to Allow for old volume manager to be used. It's basically been back burnered. Personally, I consider this a mistake because the Volume Manager is the very first thing you actually do in FreeNAS. If that itself is broken, how are we going to convince people its a trustworthy product? We've already had lots of people that basically show up and they respond with "If the Volume Manger is this broke I don't even want to know how unreliable it is with my data".

Sorry, but there's a big fail when 1/2 of the mods don't upgrade their zpool to v5000 just so they can go back to the old volume manager if necessary...

And with that, I'll get off my soap box and go make myself a sandwich now that the tornado warning is over.

 

[joeschmuck]

Soap boxes are fine, tornado's not so fine.

 

[warri]

Would "zpool create pool_name raidz3 ada0 ada1 ada2 ada3 ada4 ada5 ada6" work, assuming the drive names are ada0 through ada6 and pool_name is the name of the pool you are creating.

Yes, this certainly works. You might want to create swap partitions and gpt labels first, though. Otherwise there might be unexpected problems with the GUI.

 

[cyberjock]

Now we're on a tornado watch for the next 3 hours. Better than a warning. I've already had hail that was over 1" in diameter.

 

[Dusan]

Yes, this certainly works. You might want to create swap partitions and gpt labels first, though. Otherwise there might be unexpected problems with the GUI.

In this case I find it easier for new users to boot into 8.3.2 and create the pool there than creating everything via CLI (labels, swap, pool)

 

[g:String]

...which is exactly what I've done, Dusan. And as an added bonus, I was able to format the 8th drive which failed formatting on the 911. So, double thanks. I hope they get this stuff fixed for other newbies.

 

[warri]

In this case I find it easier for new users to boot into 8.3.2 and create the pool there than creating everything via CLI (labels, swap, pool)

You are right, still rather inconvenient. I dont't quite understand why the devs didn't keep some kind of advanced volume creation mode, since this use case comes up quite often actually.