Extend Volume from the same disk

[pete748]

Evening Folks,

Please don't hate on me to much I'm really new at this. How on earth do I extend a volume from the same disk?

So long volume was running out of space so I gave the disk more space using VMware and rebooted my FreeNAS box.

FreeNAS can now see the extra space that belongs to the disk however I cant figure out however to extend volume 1 into it.

Any help will be appreciated.

 

[nojohnny101]

Please don't hate on me to much I'm really new at this. How on earth do I extend a volume from the same disk?

No ones going to hate you. These forums are pretty friendly compared to most and people are here because they either want to learn or help, so if you fall into one of those categories then you're good.

I'm not sure exactly what you want to do. Maybe you are getting terminology mixed up. A pool is made up of vdevs. Once you create a pool, you expand it by creating vdevs, which are made up of disks. Once you create vdevs, you can't "expand them", which means you can't add more disks to it (with a few exceptions).

Maybe can you explain a bit more what you want to accomplish?

 

[pete748]

Hey buddy,

Thank you for the reply. Sorry I'm a windows server guy wanting to learn FreeNAS.

So my FreeNAS box sits on VMware, I've attached a screen shot of the config.

I got an alert on FreeNAS saying "The capacity for the volume 'Volume1' is currently at 82%, while the recommended value is below 80%."

So I'm like sweet I'll just extend/grow the volume. I give Hard disk 2 on VMware an extra 100GB, it was 200GB.

I log into FreeNAS to view the disk and its picked up the extra 100GB after a reboot which is cool.

However the problem I'm now facing is how do I extend/grow the volume into the extra space I've given the disk.

I hope this makes sense.

Pete

 

[SweetAndLow]

You are testing in vmware. The way to expand your volume is to just nuke it and make a new one.

You do not run zfs ontop of a vmdk or virtual filesystem it must run directly on the disks.

 

[pete748]

Afternoon,

Thank you for the reply, is that really the only way to extend a volume?

 

[danb35]

Another option would be, rather than increasing the size of da1, create another virtual disk (da3) of the desired size, then use the GUI to replace da1 with da3.

 

[wblock]

Please show the output of zpool status. If your volume is a mirror, both drives must be expanded before the volume will grow. If it's a stripe, well... I would think it would expand immediately, but since saving data on a single-drive stripe is roughly equivalent to moving it to /dev/null, I haven't tried.

 

[danb35]

If your volume is a mirror, both drives must be expanded before the volume will grow.

He's got two disks, and two pools. Barring partitioning funkiness, that has to be two single-disk pools.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Afternoon,

Thank you for the reply, is that really the only way to extend a volume?

No there are lots of ways to expand or extend a pool. You can replace every hdd in the vdev with larger drives or you can add a new vdev to the pool.

I don't get what your issue is. Using VMware for freenas is testing only and should never be used to store real data because it doesn't have any redundancy when it's on a virtual disk.

 

[pete748]

He's got two disks, and two pools. Barring partitioning funkiness, that has to be two single-disk pools.

Morning,

danb35 you're correct mate. I've presented two disks to freenas and created two pools with a single volume in each... I think that's correct.

The reason I did this was because one pool has personal information in it and the other I was going to use plex to present media and maybe open it up to friends and family.

 

[pete748]

No there are lots of ways to expand or extend a pool. You can replace every hdd in the vdev with larger drives or you can add a new vdev to the pool.

I don't get what your issue is. Using VMware for freenas is testing only and should never be used to store real data because it doesn't have any redundancy when it's on a virtual disk.

Thank you for the reply. I'm going to argue your assumption, yes my freenas is running on VMware however my VMware is running on a HP Gen8 Microserver with a HP Smart Array P222 Controller which is configured in raid 10 with ssds. I also backup the virtual disks onto an external hdd.

You of course know a lot more about this than me but I'm finding it hard to believe that you can't extend a drive into the white space and that you need to add larger drivers to the pool to do some swapping trickery.

I work with windows and virtualisation technology's all day long and growing/extending a drive is a 5 minute job.

The whole reason I wanted to use and learn freenas was because I wanted a light weight yet powerful platform as my home file server and a windows file server seemed a little OTT.

 

[pete748]

Please show the output of zpool status. If your volume is a mirror, both drives must be expanded before the volume will grow. If it's a stripe, well... I would think it would expand immediately, but since saving data on a single-drive stripe is roughly equivalent to moving it to /dev/null, I haven't tried.

I'll get this info to you tonight mate as I'm at work today :D

 

[danb35]

'm finding it hard to believe that you can't extend a drive into the white space

FreeNAS really isn't designed to deal with drives that magically get bigger.

 

[pete748]

FreeNAS really isn't designed to deal with drives that magically get bigger.

Fair comment mate

 

[gpsguy]

This might be okay for testing FreeNAS, but we would never recommend it, since you've virtualized the disks (VMDK's) running on hardware RAID. Even without the virtualization layer, one shouldn't use hardware RAID with ZFS. Do a forum search for "hardware RAID" for more info.

I'm going to argue your assumption, yes my freenas is running on VMware however my VMware is running on a HP Gen8 Microserver with a HP Smart Array P222 Controller which is configured in raid 10 with ssds.

It might be a 5 minute job in this day and age, but one couldn't use diskpart/extend to grow the C: drive on Server 2003. That took some hackery. Or, trusting a random Dell utility that might work on a HP server.

I work with windows and virtualisation technology's all day long and growing/extending a drive is a 5 minute job.

 

[gpsguy]

One can run FreeNAS in a virtual environment using ESXi, if you do it correctly. We have a few users, like @Stux and @joeschmuck doing it.

One of the keys to success is configuring the HBA for PCI Passthrough. This assumes that the HBA isn't using hardware RAID. One needs to use a supported HBA that can be flashed to IT mode.

Sorry, I can't write more - gotta head off to work.

 

[pete748]

This might be okay for testing FreeNAS, but we would never recommend it, since you've virtualized the disks (VMDK's) running on hardware RAID. Even without the virtualization layer, one shouldn't use hardware RAID with ZFS. Do a forum search for "hardware RAID" for more info.



It might be a 5 minute job in this day and age, but one couldn't use diskpart/extend to grow the C: drive on Server 2003. That took some hackery. Or, trusting a random Dell utility that might work on a HP server.

Afternoon mate,

Fair enough, all those pointers seem reasonable :) Can you recommend a good starters guide?

Sounds like I need to re build my box

 

[danb35]

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ide-to-not-completely-losing-your-data.12714/

 

[pete748]

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ide-to-not-completely-losing-your-data.12714/

cheers buddy

 

[danb35]

Come to think of it, I recall some discussion earlier that might have been relevant. It was in the context of > 2 TB disks on a controller/motherboard that only supported 2 TB, and what would happen if, after a pool was created on those disks, they were moved to a controller/motherboard that supported their full size. My memory is that, after some jiggery-pokery, the full capacity was usable, but I don't recall what jiggery-pokery was done. Some searching of the forums would probably find it, though.