Drobo to TrueNAS

[craigkendall]

I have a Drobo 5N2 which has five 8TB drives in it. The fan is running constantly after just having been replaced with a new one. Guessing it's days are numbered.

Contemplating switching over to a TrueNAS Mini X and wondering about any transition experience anyone on here has with similar (Drobo -> TrueNAS device).

The TrueNAS Mini X comes diskless. I have some old 4TB drives (5 each) I can throw into it, format then use for the transition. Once the data from the 8TB drives is transferred to the new TrueNAS Mini X on 4TB drives, can I start hot swapping the formatted 8TB drives into the TrueNAS Mini X and bring it up to all the 8TB drives like I can with a Drobo?

 

[Stux]

I have a Drobo 5N2 which has five 8TB drives in it. The fan is running constantly after just having been replaced with a new one. Guessing it's days are numbered.

Contemplating switching over to a TrueNAS Mini X and wondering about any transition experience anyone on here has with similar (Drobo -> TrueNAS device).

The TrueNAS Mini X comes diskless. I have some old 4TB drives (5 each) I can throw into it, format then use for the transition. Once the data from the 8TB drives is transferred to the new TrueNAS Mini X on 4TB drives, can I start hot swapping the formatted 8TB drives into the TrueNAS Mini X and bring it up to all the 8TB drives like I can with a Drobo?

ZFS is not as flexible as Drobo.

You will be able to establish a pool with a 5 disk vdev. You will need to choose if you want 1 or 2 disks of redundancy (RaidZ1 or RaidZ2) up-front, and you will not be able to change that without recreating the pool (ie copying off/back the data).

Once you have created the pool with the 5 4TB disks, you will be able to upgrade to all 8TB disks by replacing 1 disk at a time, but the expanded size will only become available once all 5 disks have been replaced.

That is assuming you use RaidZ.

If you decide instead to use pairs of mirrored drives, then you can upgrade a pair at a time.

PS: I migrated from a Drobo5D to TrueNAS... many many years ago now.

 

[craigkendall]

ZFS is not as flexible as Drobo.

You will be able to establish a pool with a 5 disk vdev. You will need to choose if you want 1 or 2 disks of redundancy (RaidZ1 or RaidZ2) up-front, and you will not be able to change that without recreating the pool (ie copying off/back the data).

Once you have created the pool with the 5 4TB disks, you will be able to upgrade to all 8TB disks by replacing 1 disk at a time, but the expanded size will only become available once all 5 disks have been replaced.

That is assuming you use RaidZ.

If you decide instead to use pairs of mirrored drives, then you can upgrade a pair at a time.

PS: I migrated from a Drobo5D to TrueNAS... many many years ago now.

Thanks @Stux this was exactly the information I needed.

Now I'm looking at a Dell Poweredge T320 which I may use to build my own TrueNAS. The info you provided is super helpful for that as well. Thank you!