Newbie Help Expanding Storage

[rookster1984]

Hello i am a newbie to linux and freenas, i have been running a few days now and all ready got little space left on the raid i setup.
I have 2X 1TB Hard Drives Setup as a mirror, i was thinking of getting 2 more drives and upgrading it to a mirror/stripe to make it 2TB Mirror with the 4 drives as this would be cheaper then replacing the 2x 1TB Drives with 2x 2TB Drives. The problem is i have been trying to figure out if i could, from what people have said in the forum you cant (if understand correctly), is this right? If not how would i do this please? or do i need to spend the extra £40 on getting 2TB's instead and leaving it as a mirror.

Please help, many thanks all.

 

[Chris Moore]

Hello i am a newbie to linux and freenas,

FreeNAS is not Linux. FreeNAS is an appliance operating system that is build using FreeBSD, which is Unix. Unix is similar to Linux, because Linux was an intentional copy of Unix functionality. Just to be clear.

i have been running a few days now and all ready got little space left on the raid i setup.

Wow, filled it faster than you expected?

The problem is i have been trying to figure out if i could, from what people have said in the forum you can't (if understand correctly), is this right?

No, this is not correct. Some misunderstandings are going on somewhere.
I could help you better if you gave more background on the hardware and software configuration you are currently using. Here is a guide that might explain the kinds of things to share for future:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/updated-forum-rules-12-5-18.45124/

Based on what you said, you have a pool that consists of a single vdev. That vdev is a mirror. You want to expand that pool by adding a second vdev, another mirror. This is perfectly legitimate, but it gives you the capacity of two out of four drives. If you are using 1TB drives, it might be better to start over and make a RAIDz1 pool, which would give you almost the capacity of three of the four drives. That would mean copying all your data out of the pool, destroying the pool as it is, adding the new drives, creating a new RAIDz pool and then copying all the data back. This can be a daunting task, so I understand if you would prefer to simply add another mirror, which is totally possible. Just post back and someone here can direct you to some resources.

Before we get into exactly how, you might benefit from reviewing documentation a bit more to (hopefully) understand better how all this works.

Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/terminology-and-abbreviations-primer.28174/

Building, Burn-In, and Testing your FreeNAS system
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/building-burn-in-and-testing-your-freenas-system.38/

Github repository for FreeNAS scripts, including disk burnin
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...for-freenas-scripts-including-disk-burnin.28/

Useful Commands
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/useful-commands.30314/#post-195192

Hard Drive Troubleshooting Guide (All Versions of FreeNAS)
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...bleshooting-guide-all-versions-of-freenas.17/

Uncle Fester's Basic FreeNAS Configuration Guide
https://www.familybrown.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=fester:intro

 

[rookster1984]

Hello, thanks so much for getting back to me, yes i did fill it quicker then i expected, i currently only have the 2 1tb drives and thought i just upgrade the raid to a i think its called a raid 4 a stripe mirror (now i know different). I have a i5 quad core with 8gb ram and 2 1tb hdd's, with a vm for email server (couldent find a plugin for one, hope some cleaver person can add one 1 day :)), i also have the syncthing and plex plugins installed and setup.
i am just hoping for a simple way to upgrade it, 2 udevs one for vm and plugins and 1 for all shares would work, if i can find a way to move the shares across, as my budget is very limited so wouldn't have a drive big enough to back up too or i would do the new raidz pool (plus i wouldent have a clue how to backup vm, plugins etc and restore them.

 

[Chris Moore]

thought i just upgrade the raid to a i think its called a raid 4 a stripe mirror

FreeNAS (ZFS) does not use that terminology. That is why I gave you the link to the Terminology and Abbreviations Primer and to the Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC so you will know the correct terms to use and what they describe.

i am just hoping for a simple way to upgrade it

Simple is just adding a second mirror vdev to the existing pool. You read the documentation and it will become clear what that means.
It is really simple to extend the existing storage pool through the volume manager.
https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2/storage.html#extending-a-pool

 

[pro lamer]

wouldn't have a drive big enough to back up too or i would do the new raidz pool (plus i wouldent have a clue how to backup vm, plugins etc and restore them

Keep in mind that redundancy is not a backup. If you really don't want to learn too much how to backup and restore you can consider some temporary third disk in each mirror - @Arwen has described it somewhere but I can't say from the top of my head where. And you'd need to stick to mirrors not raidz1...

EDIT: I've just realized it may be a bit tricky in case of striped mirrors... :/ now I think that rather not.

Sent from my phone

 

[Arwen]

Keep in mind that redundancy is not a backup. If you really don't want to learn too much how to backup and restore you can consider some temporary third disk in each mirror - @Arwen has described it somewhere but I can't say from the top of my head where.
...

@pro lamer, if you are referring to ZFS split mirrors, it's basically a zpool split POOL NEWPOOL DEVICE ... command. I don't think that is available from the FreeNAS GUI. (But, hey what do I know about a GUI I rarely use... and has been updated recently.)

 

[pro lamer]

if you are referring to ZFS split

I couldn't remember the tech details but now, after a quick web search, I have found this thread https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...-detaching-a-drive-to-a-mirrored-array.50687/ and it apparently refers to zfs split... Anyway it is not the post of you what I had read before... More googling found what I had read at first https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/backup-solution-sought.69189/

Sent from my phone

 

[Mr_N]

Buy 6 or 8TB drives, its cheaper on a per GB basis than 2TB ones and has been for a while, then you can make a separate mirror of 2x8TB and move your stuff over to that, then get rid of the 2x1TB drives and when you need more space buy another 2x8TB and add them to your pool :)

 

[Chris Moore]

Please help, many thanks all.

Finished reading all that?