Expand RaidZ2

[Odub]

Hello,
I built a FreeNAS server (still on FreeNAS-9.10.2-U6) a few years ago using 8 X HGST 4TB drives for serving large media files and and it has been working great. However I have been running low on space recently so I purchased 8 new Seagate 10TB drives to replace the 4TBs and expand the pool volume. I started the process of replacing the first drive, it re-slivered fine but I received this message when checking the zpool status after:

pool: Tank state: ONLINE status: One or more devices are configured to use a non-native block size. Expect reduced performance. action: Replace affected devices with devices that support the configured block size, or migrate data to a properly configured pool. .. gptid/5a41ee69-328e-11ea-a5be-00074307bd22 ONLINE 0 0 0 block size: 512B configured, 4096B native

I did some reading and found that the ashift of my pool is 9, meaning it isn't compatible with the new drives 4k block size.

My questions are:

1. What kind of performance decrease would I expect to see with the incompatible block size?
2. Is recreating the pool my only option for using these drives without a performance hit?
3. Can I remove the newly replaced (10TB) drive from the pool to create another pool in a separate chassis?

Thanks

 

[blanchet]

Answers

1. What kind of performance decrease would I expect to see with the incompatible block size?

The writing performance may be awful.

2. Is recreating the pool my only option for using these drives without a performance hit?

yes

3. Can I remove the newly replaced (10TB) drive from the pool to create another pool in a separate chassis?

yes, you can reinstall the original disk

 

[Odub]

Thanks for the reply.

So I have to "Replace" the new 10TB with the old 4TB?

 

[blanchet]

So I have to "Replace" the new 10TB with the old 4TB?

Yes

 

[Odub]

Thanks. I guess I'm in the market for a new server then :(

 

[blanchet]

Thanks. I guess I'm in the market for a new server then :(

You do not really need a new server:

With a USB-to-SATA enclosure

1. Plug a 10 TB disk through a USB-to-SATA enclosure into the FreeNAS server
2. Create a ZFS pool (single disk)
3. Backup data to the USB disk with rsync or even better with zfs replication
4. When the disk is full, unmount the pool, and repeat again with a new disk to have a 2nd copy
5. At the end of the backup procedure, you will have two full copies of your data. Each copy is spread on 3 or 4 disks
6. Optional: upgrade to a more recent version of FreeNAS. When coming from 9.x, the version 11.1u7 is a safe choice
7. Destroy your actual pool, and recreate it with 4K alignment (ashift=12) with the old disks.
8. Restore the data from backup
9. Replace each old disk in the pool by new ones.

Without a USB-to-SATA enclosure, you can use a Linux workstation

1. Put a 10TB disk in a Linux workstation
2. Format it with ext4, xfs (or even better with zfs)
3. Backup your pool on this disk with rsync or ZFS replication
4. When the disk is full, unmount it and repeat again with a new disk to have a 2nd copy
5. You will have a backup on 3 or 4 independent disks depending of the data volume
6. At the end of the backup procedure, you will have two full copies of your data. Each copy is spread on 3 or 4 disks
7. Optional: upgrade to a more recent version of FreeNAS. When coming from 9.x, the version 11.1u7 is a safe choice
8. Destroy your actual pool, and recreate it with 4K alignment (ashift=12) with the old disks.
9. Restore the data from backup
10. Replace each old disk in the pool by new ones.

 

[artlessknave]

I don't see the chassis listed, if you have the bays/ports you can do the above steps right in the server itself