Hi,
I am planning an upgrade of my existing FreeNAS server and am posting here in hopes of getting comments/suggestions on my plan along with answers to a few questions. I hope this is okay since this isn’t technically a build a new FreeNAS system.
My current system is running FreeNAS-11.1-U4 and is pretty basic system:
Dell PowerEdge T20 with Pentium G3220 3.0 GHz
20GB ECC RAM
4 x Western Digital Red 3TB NAS Hard Disk Drives
APC BE550G Back-UPS 550 VA 8-outlet Uninterruptible Power Supply
This system is using RAID-Z2 and has usable storage is 5.1 TB. The system has only one volume with 4 different datasets. The datasets are used for data storage of things like backup images, photos and such. I am not using the system for anything else and I am not running any VMs.
The goal of my upgrade is to increase the amount of usable storage available to the volume -- right now it is about 60% used. Using one of the on-line ZFS capacity calculators, it looks like added two more 3TB hard drives would increase the usable storage to about 10.5 TB.
As I am already using all four of the SATA ports in the T20, my plan is to add an LSI SAS9211-8I HBA. To use this card with FreeNAS, I believe it needs to run in IT (Initiator Target) mode with the correct firmware which I believe is v20.00.04.00.
To upgrade the HBA firmware, one option is to create a bootable USB drive and that looks to be pretty straightforward. I also read that FreeNAS has a built-in SAS2Flash utility – wondering if anyone has an opinion on using this option instead of the bootable USB approach.
To physically add the two new drives to the T20 chassis, I plan to use a two drive card cage salvaged from another computer and fabricate a metal plate to secure into the chassis. To connect the drives to the HBA, I will use an internal Mini-SAS to 4x SATA forward breakout cable. To power the drives, I plan to use a couple SATA power Y splitter cables.
The T20 has a stock 290W power supply but I am unsure if it has sufficient power for the two additional drives and the new HBA. I read through the “Proper Power Supply Sizing Guidance” posting and but I don’t have data specs for the Dell components. Looking at the WD website, the peak power draw for the Red hard drives is about 21W per drive and the LSI HBA’s worst case power consumption is 14.63W.
I did find one posting about a T20 and 4 x WD Red 4TB drives. The poster said that the whole system drew about 90W on spin-up. If this is really the case, I am guessing that two more drives and one HBA might get the spin-up power draw to about 145W. So maybe the 290W power supply would work.
Any comments/suggestions on this power supply question would be appreciated.
As far as cooling, the four drives in the current system run at temperatures between 31C and 36C. The new card cage I am adding should have pretty good airflow around it so I am hoping the additional heat from the new drives will not significantly affect the temperatures of the current drives. Again, any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
Once I have all the hardware installed, I plan to first burn-in the new drives by running a SMART Short Test, SMART Conveyance Test and then checking the entire disk for bad blocks. Assuming no problems are found, I would then use them to increase the usable storage.
So how I actually increase the usable storage is where I need some help. Reading the 11.1-U4 User Guide, it says I can use the Volume Manager to extend a volume to add disks to an existing ZFS volume to increase capacity. But there is a note saying after a vdev is created, more drives cannot be added to that vdev.
If I understand this correctly, I cannot simply add the two new drives to the system (using an extend) and have FreeNAS magically integrate the two new drives with the four existing drives so I end up with 10.5 TB usable storage that is RAID-Z2. It sounds like this feature (which is termed “RAIDZ expansion”) is coming but is at least a year away.
So if I did want to use my 6 drive to create 10.5 TB of usable storage with RAID-Z2 today, what do I need to do? I am guessing that I would first backup all of the data elsewhere. Then I would basically start over using all six drives to create a new vdev with RAID-Z2 that has 10.5 TB usable storage. From there, I would then restore my data from the backup. Are there any better ways to do this?
Thanks in advance for reading all the way through this posting as well as for any comments/corrections/suggestions.
Paul
I am planning an upgrade of my existing FreeNAS server and am posting here in hopes of getting comments/suggestions on my plan along with answers to a few questions. I hope this is okay since this isn’t technically a build a new FreeNAS system.
My current system is running FreeNAS-11.1-U4 and is pretty basic system:
Dell PowerEdge T20 with Pentium G3220 3.0 GHz
20GB ECC RAM
4 x Western Digital Red 3TB NAS Hard Disk Drives
APC BE550G Back-UPS 550 VA 8-outlet Uninterruptible Power Supply
This system is using RAID-Z2 and has usable storage is 5.1 TB. The system has only one volume with 4 different datasets. The datasets are used for data storage of things like backup images, photos and such. I am not using the system for anything else and I am not running any VMs.
The goal of my upgrade is to increase the amount of usable storage available to the volume -- right now it is about 60% used. Using one of the on-line ZFS capacity calculators, it looks like added two more 3TB hard drives would increase the usable storage to about 10.5 TB.
As I am already using all four of the SATA ports in the T20, my plan is to add an LSI SAS9211-8I HBA. To use this card with FreeNAS, I believe it needs to run in IT (Initiator Target) mode with the correct firmware which I believe is v20.00.04.00.
To upgrade the HBA firmware, one option is to create a bootable USB drive and that looks to be pretty straightforward. I also read that FreeNAS has a built-in SAS2Flash utility – wondering if anyone has an opinion on using this option instead of the bootable USB approach.
To physically add the two new drives to the T20 chassis, I plan to use a two drive card cage salvaged from another computer and fabricate a metal plate to secure into the chassis. To connect the drives to the HBA, I will use an internal Mini-SAS to 4x SATA forward breakout cable. To power the drives, I plan to use a couple SATA power Y splitter cables.
The T20 has a stock 290W power supply but I am unsure if it has sufficient power for the two additional drives and the new HBA. I read through the “Proper Power Supply Sizing Guidance” posting and but I don’t have data specs for the Dell components. Looking at the WD website, the peak power draw for the Red hard drives is about 21W per drive and the LSI HBA’s worst case power consumption is 14.63W.
I did find one posting about a T20 and 4 x WD Red 4TB drives. The poster said that the whole system drew about 90W on spin-up. If this is really the case, I am guessing that two more drives and one HBA might get the spin-up power draw to about 145W. So maybe the 290W power supply would work.
Any comments/suggestions on this power supply question would be appreciated.
As far as cooling, the four drives in the current system run at temperatures between 31C and 36C. The new card cage I am adding should have pretty good airflow around it so I am hoping the additional heat from the new drives will not significantly affect the temperatures of the current drives. Again, any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
Once I have all the hardware installed, I plan to first burn-in the new drives by running a SMART Short Test, SMART Conveyance Test and then checking the entire disk for bad blocks. Assuming no problems are found, I would then use them to increase the usable storage.
So how I actually increase the usable storage is where I need some help. Reading the 11.1-U4 User Guide, it says I can use the Volume Manager to extend a volume to add disks to an existing ZFS volume to increase capacity. But there is a note saying after a vdev is created, more drives cannot be added to that vdev.
If I understand this correctly, I cannot simply add the two new drives to the system (using an extend) and have FreeNAS magically integrate the two new drives with the four existing drives so I end up with 10.5 TB usable storage that is RAID-Z2. It sounds like this feature (which is termed “RAIDZ expansion”) is coming but is at least a year away.
So if I did want to use my 6 drive to create 10.5 TB of usable storage with RAID-Z2 today, what do I need to do? I am guessing that I would first backup all of the data elsewhere. Then I would basically start over using all six drives to create a new vdev with RAID-Z2 that has 10.5 TB usable storage. From there, I would then restore my data from the backup. Are there any better ways to do this?
Thanks in advance for reading all the way through this posting as well as for any comments/corrections/suggestions.
Paul
