Expand ZFS drive - Single disk - no raid?

[silver565]

Hi everyone

I have a FreeNAS-8.3.0-RELEASE-p1-x86 virtual machine running that serves as an NFS store for our ESXi hosts(It holds ISO images and some helpful install files etc). The server is setup with two drives. A single 2GB disk for Freenas to run on, and a 130GB disk for the NFS store.

What I'd like to do is expand the single disk to 200GB so that I have more room. I've done a bit of searching, but have only managed to find people doing it with ZFS raid volumes(Swapping out a disk for a larger one, and then swapping out the rest for larger disks etc). I haven't been able to find anything on a single disk setup. Is this possible? I'd like to avoid rebuilding the NFS store if possible.

Could I convert it to a mirror and then expand it that way?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks!

 

[jgreco]

If this was a physical machine: You could add a second disk to the pool. This will increase storage.

However, with a virtual setup, your best bet is probably just to create a second disk for the FreeNAS VM, copy the data to it, and destroy the first disk. It is the most "newbie understandable" technique. There are things that you could do that would make it look like extending the disks, but they're rather more complex and dangerous.

 

[silver565]

If this was a physical machine: You could add a second disk to the pool. This will increase storage.

However, with a virtual setup, your best bet is probably just to create a second disk for the FreeNAS VM, copy the data to it, and destroy the first disk. It is the most "newbie understandable" technique. There are things that you could do that would make it look like extending the disks, but they're rather more complex and dangerous.

Hmmm, surely I could just add a second disk/VMDK to the VM and expand it? Or is Freenas aware that it's a VM?

 

[jgreco]

FreeNAS doesn't care, but running FreeNAS as a VM is inherently dangerous, and making it more complicated than it needs to be is foolhardy, and using a VM as a server for an ESXi datastore borders on disaster waiting to happen.

 

[silver565]

FreeNAS doesn't care, but running FreeNAS as a VM is inherently dangerous, and making it more complicated than it needs to be is foolhardy, and using a VM as a server for an ESXi datastore borders on disaster waiting to happen.

Wow really? I think I missed that memo :(

I've had it running for over a year serving ISO images to servers(No VMs run on the store)

 

[jgreco]

As long as you're not putting anything precious in it, you're probably fine. We've seen a lot of people do what they think of as "reasonable things" and end up losing their data, though. There's a difference between "I gotta redownload all those ISO's" and "I just lost all my valuable data."

 

[silver565]

As long as you're not putting anything precious in it, you're probably fine. We've seen a lot of people do what they think of as "reasonable things" and end up losing their data, though. There's a difference between "I gotta redownload all those ISO's" and "I just lost all my valuable data."

Ah, no it's fine. The ISOs are on a windows server safely tucked away. The NFS store is just a convenience for us

I'll just add a new disk and copy everything over. I just thought there would be a nice easy way to do it(Much like you do with server 2008R2)

Thanks for your help :)

 

[jgreco]

Nice and easy are all relative. You have an existing disk label to worry about. You can expand the disk, twiddle the label, and then tease ZFS into expanding, I *think*. Not an exercise for beginners and I don't generally recommend things to people if I haven't done them myself or am sure that they'll go off without problems.

 

[silver565]

Nice and easy are all relative. You have an existing disk label to worry about. You can expand the disk, twiddle the label, and then tease ZFS into expanding, I *think*. Not an exercise for beginners and I don't generally recommend things to people if I haven't done them myself or am sure that they'll go off without problems.

Thanks, I'll have a tinker around with a clone of it. I'm pretty familiar with linux, so I'm sure that knowledge will help a little bit

Thanks again :)

 

[paleoN]

Thanks, I'll have a tinker around with a clone of it. I'm pretty familiar with linux, so I'm sure that knowledge will help a little bit

Adding a second larger 'disk' and mirroring the existing one is likely easier. It can also be done with the pool online.

Otherwise, you need to expand the disk, fix the GPT, expand the existing ZFS partition (don't think I've tried this one), get ZFS to fix its labels (2 & 3 are no longer in the correct location) and expand the pool.

The mirror option is superior. I would also change this to an actual mirror after the expansion.

 

[silver565]

Adding a second larger 'disk' and mirroring the existing one is likely easier. It can also be done with the pool online.

Otherwise, you need to expand the disk, fix the GPT, expand the existing ZFS partition (don't think I've tried this one), get ZFS to fix its labels (2 & 3 are no longer in the correct location) and expand the pool.

The mirror option is superior. I would also change this to an actual mirror after the expansion.

Thanks :)

 

[uberwebguru]

If this was a physical machine: You could add a second disk to the pool. This will increase storage.

However, with a virtual setup, your best bet is probably just to create a second disk for the FreeNAS VM, copy the data to it, and destroy the first disk. It is the most "newbie understandable" technique. There are things that you could do that would make it look like extending the disks, but they're rather more complex and dangerous.

can i setup FreeNAS on a PC with single HDD?

 

[jgreco]

Yes.

 

[uberwebguru]

Yes.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

Thanks alot!

 

[cyberjock]

ROFL. He starts a thread and refuses to "RTFM" when that's what I pointed to, so he goes and hijacks another thread.. awesome.