Noob question

[evillone]

Greetings all,

Fairly new to the freenas world and loving it -
I'm currently running version 8.0.4
i have 4x 3tb in raidz and wanted to add another 3tb

I have installed a controller and the other 3 tb Drive.

All and any documentation i have read asks me to go into ZFS VOLUME MANAGER -

I do NOT have that option in this version of FREENAS -

Am i missing something???

 

[mauirixxx]

you are running a VERY old version. v9.2.1.5 is the latest, with v9.2.1.6 in beta testing (no ETA on release yet).

Upgrade if you can, if no can then ... I dunno. I never used the 8.x versions of FreeNAS.

 

[evillone]

how easy is it to update?

i follow the philosophy of " if it aint broke don't fix it" :p

but there's gotta be a way to extend volumes in this version?!?!
how is that possible??

 

[danb35]

Whether you upgrade to 9.2.x or not, you won't be able to do what you're wanting to do safely. It is possible to add another single drive to your zpool, but if that drive fails, you lose your entire pool. The reason is that your pool will consist of two vdevs striped together. The first vdev will be your 4 x 3 TB RAIDZ1, and the second vdev will be your fifth 3 TB drive. This will expand the size of your zpool by about 3 TB (less ZFS overhead), but it's like any other striped configuration--if any member of the stripe fails, the entire stripe fails.

It is not possible to add a single drive to a RAIDZ vdev. It's possible to add a drive to a mirrored vdev (turning a two-way mirror into a three-way mirror, for example), but not a to RAIDZ.

Edit: I guess another option would be to create a separate zpool for just the new drive. This still wouldn't give you any redundancy for that drive, but at least the rest of your data wouldn't be at risk when it failed. That would have your storage split among two volumes, though, not combined in a single volume like the above configuration.

 

[evillone]

so i guess an upgrade is due as well as another 3tb drive - - - so the way to go is to install 2 drives then?
would i be able to merge 2 drives into the pool?

 

[evillone]

i just tried to upgrade to 9.2.1.4 and it didn't take :(

should i be trying an older version?

rebooted and still showing old ver -

update:
now trying earliest version they have listed 8.2.0-

 

[gpsguy]

As the other posters said, yes, you could add (stripe) a set of mirrored drives to your existing pool.

Given the version you are on now, I wouldn't advise upgrading straight to the latest. Maybe 8.04 -> 8.2 -> 8.3.2 -> 9.s.0 ... You can find older versions of the software here: http://cdn.freenas.org/

Once you get to 8.3.2 you might consider upgrading your pool to ZFS v28 (I think you are on v15 now). If you do upgrade to 9.x, I wouldn't upgrade the pool - that'll give you the flexibilily to roll back, if needed. The v9.2.1.x series has been plagued with problems - I surely wouldn't upgrade to it, until *all* the bugs are fleshed out.

One last question, what are your hardware spec's? In general, v9.x needs more resources (RAM) than v8.x. Some users have been shocked to find that FreeNAS worked fine in v8, but not so well in v9.

 

[gpsguy]

btw, i would backup you configuration file, install a newer version on a new flash drive, and restore your configuration file to it.

 

[evillone]

thanks for all the input guys, and yes, i will take that advice GPSGUY and stick with the latest version of 8.x.x if i can get there. ;)

ps: yep config is backed up


update -
8.2.0 wont take, that's as far back as i can go :(

 

[gpsguy]

Don't do an upgrade. Do a fresh install of 8.20 on a 4 Gb stick and restore your 8.0.4 configuration file.


Sent from my phone

 

[evillone]

waiting for another attempt to finish.
will try that next - -

man this is nerve wrecking - - - - :(

thx guys.

 

[evillone]

Good News!
My last attempt worked !! -

i am now sitting at FreeNAS-8.2.0-RELEASE-p1-x64 (r11950)

and i now have a VOLUME MANAGER !!

ok great.. thanks again guys - i think im gonna sit at this version for a while.

So again, sorry to repeat myself,

You guys recommend 2 x 3tb (as opposed to 1 x 3tb) to extend the existing pool right?

update:

ok - apologies - re-read again - i can stripe a new pair of 3tb to existing pool ... yes :)

i guess aside from redoing the whole thing that is the best way to extend??

 

[gpsguy]

Yes, we recommend adding two drives, in a mirror and extending your pool with the mirror.

You need to be careful when doing it, since you could easily make a mistake and end up adding the 2 drives (without the mirror), to your existing pool. A number of users have made that mistake and ended up having to backup their pool, destroy it, and start over, to fix that mistake.

 

[gpsguy]

If you were contemplating re-doing it, I'd suggest going with 6x3Tb RAIDz2. Same amount of storage, higher degree of redundancy.

 

[evillone]

ok guys, after trying to downgrade from 8.3 and it wouldn't let me, i decided to remove the original USB key and try to re-install 8.2 on a different usb key from cd -
i installed 8.2 using 3 seperate keys and all were coming back with DISK BOOT FAILURE -
i then decided not to mess around anymore and put the Original USB key back in and now am getting the same message using the original untouched USB key running 8.3
Please help..!!

update - - - fixed bios setting - - duh... now trying with 8.2 and copy old config back - hopefully works-

 

[evillone]

worked - got everything back and am staying at 8.2

Thanks again all of you guys for your help -

 

[evillone]

Yes, we recommend adding two drives, in a mirror and extending your pool with the mirror.

You need to be careful when doing it, since you could easily make a mistake and end up adding the 2 drives (without the mirror), to your existing pool. A number of users have made that mistake and ended up having to backup their pool, destroy it, and start over, to fix that mistake.

im gonna get my hands on another 3tb and will have to consider the above - - i will msg back for you help!!! :D

 

[evillone]

Hey guys, back at it again.

Need a few more questions answered if i may -

when i decide to add 2 more 3TB drives to the existing pool, will freenas reconfigure the whole raid and spread the data based on 6 drives?

not sure how it works when i decide to extend the Pool.

Thanks again, you guys have been great -

 

[danb35]

The FreeNAS developers have made a design decision to hide the vdev layer of ZFS from the end user. When dealing with this kind of an operation, that's unfortunate, because I think it makes it harder to understand what's going on. I strongly recommend you read cyberjock's powerpoint in one of the sticky threads in this forum for more background, but here's a quick overview.

A ZFS pool (zpool) consists of one or more vdevs. Each vdev consists of one or more hard drives. Once you create a vdev, you can't add drives to it (unless it's a mirrored vdev). Once you add a vdev to a zpool, you can't remove it. You can, however, add new vdevs to a zpool at any time. If a zpool contains more than one vdev, its contents are striped across all the vdevs.

So, with that background, let's take a look at your setup. Your pool currently consists of a single vdev, a RAIDZ1 device of 4x 3TB drives, with a net capacity of ~9TB. You can't add another drive to that vdev. You could increase its capacity by replacing all the drives (one at a time) with 4TB drives, but that's your only option to increase the capacity of the vdev. You can, however, add another vdev, which will increase the capacity of your pool. If you create another vdev as a mirror of 2x 3TB drives, you can add that to your pool, which will increase its net capacity to ~ 12 TB. The pool will be striped between your two vdevs.

 

[evillone]

awesome, thanks for the great info danb35 !!

knowing this now,, i will back up - get my hands on 2x3tb for a total of 6x3tb and re-install fresh, maybe using a 9.x version.

Thanks again