Is expanding a volume across disks impossible?

[Ericloewe]

With RAIDZ2 or RAIDZ3, it's not a good idea. With RADIZ1 it's a genuine Very Bad Idea (tm).

 

[Nova]

Hello. I am having a similar problem to many that I've read, but with some differences. I wish to expand a 6TB pool (2x3TB, no RAID) with another 3TB drive. I try to expand the pool but am given that message about trying to add 1 drive to a 2 drive config. Can I do what I am trying to do? Do I instead need to add 2x1.5TB to the pool? There must be some way to expand a pool. I am using FreeNAS 9.10.2-U1 on a virtual system. Each of my current pools (there are 4) reside on different SAN volumes.

Thanks for any help you can give.

 

[danb35]

Can I do what I am trying to do?

Sure you can, just go into the Manual Setup mode. It will stripe the drive into your array, such that when any of the three drives fails, all data on the pool will be lost.

 

[Stux]

This is why I decided to make an account and create a post. I havent gotten a answer people can get behind. Who do I trust now? You say I can, but how? Im looking at my freenas page right now and when I did Storage->Volume Manager->Volume to extend->Extend volume, I get

• You are trying to add a virtual device consisting of 1 device(s) in a pool that has a virtual device consisting of 2 device(s)

A virtual device consisting of two devices is a mirror.

The message is trying to prevent adding a single disk stripe to a mirror.

 

[Stux]

Hello. I am having a similar problem to many that I've read, but with some differences. I wish to expand a 6TB pool (2x3TB, no RAID) with another 3TB drive. I try to expand the pool but am given that message about trying to add 1 drive to a 2 drive config. Can I do what I am trying to do? Do I instead need to add 2x1.5TB to the pool? There must be some way to expand a pool. I am using FreeNAS 9.10.2-U1 on a virtual system. Each of my current pools (there are 4) reside on different SAN volumes.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Assuming you want to keep redundancy in your pool, you need to add a pair of drives as another mirror to the mirror.

Or alternatively, backup, then change your pool to raidz1, then restore.

Or alternatively, jiggle around with disks and unsupported hacks, and degraded temporary pools and change your pool to raidz1

 

[Nova]

Assuming you want to keep redundancy in your pool, you need to add a pair of drives as another mirror to the mirror.

Or alternatively, backup, then change your pool to raidz1, then restore.

Or alternatively, jiggle around with disks and unsupported hacks, and degraded temporary pools and change your pool to raidz1

Stux - please read in entirety before replying. To what redundancy are you referring?

 

[Nova]

Sure you can, just go into the Manual Setup mode. It will stripe the drive into your array, such that when any of the three drives fails, all data on the pool will be lost.

When I go into manual mode, it states it will erase the existing data. I can't have that.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Stux - please read in entirety before replying. To what redundancy are you referring?

Since you don't tell us to hardware specs or pool layout we have no way of knowing that you are using. You mention no raid which is great because no one should ever be using raid with zfs. So you you chill out and be nice to people who are helping you.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[Nova]

A virtual device consisting of two devices is a mirror.

The message is trying to prevent adding a single disk stripe to a mirror.

Two devices doesn't mean there's a mirror. I also mention that it is a 6TB array (2x3TB, no RAID). Please stick to the question I'm asking. I do not wish to have this thread diverge from the actual need.

 

[Nova]

Since you don't tell us to hardware specs or pool layout we have no way of knowing that you are using. You mention no raid which is great because no one should ever be using raid with zfs. So you you chill out and be nice to people who are helping you.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

I'm not trying to insult or be mean in any way. I am trying to stay focused on the problem. What hardware specs are you looking for? Glad to provide them.

 

[SweetAndLow]

I'm not trying to insult or be mean in any way. I am trying to stay focused on the problem. What hardware specs are you looking for? Glad to provide them.

If you want to stay on topic you already got your answer. Select your pool and EXTEND your pool with the new disk.

You will be striping a disk into your pool and will have a single disk failure that will cause full data loss in that pool.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[Nova]

For everyone's reference, it seems that creating 2x1.5TB drives, rather than 1x3TB, enabled me to add the space to the pool.

 

[SweetAndLow]

For everyone's reference, it seems that creating 2x1.5TB drives, rather than 1x3TB, enabled me to add the space to the pool.

No clue what your problem was since you still failed to explain your goal. But here is my example of adding a disk as a stripe to a pool. It works perfectly, no need to mess with disk sizes. You also seem like you are using virtual disks which is also another terrible idea. You will lose all this data and have terrible performance. Picture attached of me extending a pool.

 

[Stux]

Stux - please read in entirety before replying. To what redundancy are you referring?

I'm sorry. Since I assumed you cared about redundancy, I assumed when you said "I wish to expand a 6TB pool (2x3TB, no RAID) with another 3TB"

That you had a 6TB pool (raw), with 2x3TB in a mirror, not in RaidZ. and you wanted to add a 3rd 3TB drive, and end up with 6TB usable. Which is either a mirror + 2 more 3TB drives, in mirror, if you care about maintaining redundancy and not destroying/restoring your pool. Or alternatively, you wanted to go to RaidZ1, and you'd have to backup/restore your pool.

Of course, if you don't care about redundancy, just extend your pool with another 3TB as a stripe. You may need to use the manual button.

 

[Stux]

Two devices doesn't mean there's a mirror. I also mention that it is a 6TB array (2x3TB, no RAID). Please stick to the question I'm asking. I do not wish to have this thread diverge from the actual need.

Two devices in a virtual device is ALWAYS a mirror vdev in ZFS. If the dialog is referring to something else, then the wording is wrong.

 

[gpsguy]

For everyone's reference, it seems that creating 2x1.5TB drives, rather than 1x3TB, enabled me to add the space to the pool.

Please post the results of zpool status in code tags to see what you have now.

 

[gpsguy]

I missed the fact that you are running FreeNAS in a virtual environment.

Please provide detailed hardware info (per the forum rules at the top of the page), hypervisor & version, etc. Does FreeNAS have direct control of your hard disks?

In the future please start a new thread. By hijacking another thread, it's harder to keep track of the environment, etc.

 

[danb35]

That you had a 6TB pool (raw), with 2x3TB in a mirror, not in RaidZ

A mirror is still RAID. It isn't RAIDZ, but it's still RAID. And two disks couldn't be RAIDZ anyway.

 

[Stux]

A mirror is still RAID. It isn't RAIDZ, but it's still RAID. And two disks couldn't be RAIDZ anyway.

Yes, I know, but how many people jump on here and tell you they have ZRAID5...

 

[Deleted47050]

For everyone's reference, it seems that creating 2x1.5TB drives, rather than 1x3TB, enabled me to add the space to the pool.

This makes sense, as you probably have your two original drives in a mirror, as everyone has been telling you, so now that you added two new drives, you didn't get any warning message.

Please post the output of zpool status. From what you wrote, your setup is terrible and **will** give you headaches. Let's see if we can do anything to improve that.