Scharbag
Guru
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2012
- Messages
- 620
I currently have a backup pool made up of a single Z1 vDev with 6@4TB drives (this backs up my production pool that is a 12 drive Z2 made of 2 6 drive vDevs mixed with 3TB and 4TB drives).
I am looking at buying another case that will allow me to use some old 3TB drives that I have. This is where it gets tricky. I would like to take the 6@4TB drives in my backup pool and move them into my production pool and then have a 12 drive backup pool with 2 6 drive vDevs made up of only 3TB disks.
The first issue I run into is that I am pretty sure if I stick a 3TB disk into the backup pool that is current made up of 6@4TB drives, the backup pool will not like that at all given it is about 80% full (probably would never like that given there is no shrink option right?).
So, a move forward path I am considering is (EDIT to update based on great suggestion to RTFM :) ):
The SuperMicro case (847E16 with SAS2 expander backplanes and 9211-8i) that I am looking at allows for 36 hot swap drive bays and 4 internal 2.5" drive bays. It also has 2 6core Xeon 5645 CPUs and 64GB of Registered ECC ram. So, this proposed new case would still allow me to grow both the backup and production pools with another 6 drives each if/when I need to add space. Only crappy part of the plan is that the 4 internal 2.5" drives are not easy to get to, so they would be an offline swap if required. Not the end of the world as they only run jails (mirrored pool, replicated to production pool) and store the system dataset (mirrored pool, total overkill but I had old 80GB SSDs lying around).
I still plan to boot from mirrored USB keys.
So, is my plan above fraught with dangers or does it make some sense? Is there a better way that I should approach this (without buying additional drives)?
Appreciate any feedback.
Cheers,
I am looking at buying another case that will allow me to use some old 3TB drives that I have. This is where it gets tricky. I would like to take the 6@4TB drives in my backup pool and move them into my production pool and then have a 12 drive backup pool with 2 6 drive vDevs made up of only 3TB disks.
The first issue I run into is that I am pretty sure if I stick a 3TB disk into the backup pool that is current made up of 6@4TB drives, the backup pool will not like that at all given it is about 80% full (probably would never like that given there is no shrink option right?).
So, a move forward path I am considering is (EDIT to update based on great suggestion to RTFM :) ):
- note: all of the 3TB drives are ST3000DM001 and 4TB drives are ST4000DM000
- move system to new case and verify system stability for a while :)
- scrub production pool
- verify UPS works!!!
- verify SMART status of all drives, specifically the 3TB drives as the ST3000DM001 model is *cough* crap
- ensure production pool is configured to auto-expand (it is right now)
- mark serial numbers on all drive caddies :)
- destroy backup pool (unzip fly...)
- create backup pool made up of 2 Z1 vDevs (5@4TB + 1@3TB in vDev1 and 1@4TB + 5@3TB in vDev2)
- scrub new backup pool and verify stability
- rsync (or replicate) data from production pool to new backup pool
- this will leave me in a short window with no backups - about a day or so to copy data IIRC plus testing time
- I will be hammering away at the production pool - it is stable and happy and is scrubbed bi-weekly
- even during scrubs, HDD temperatures do not exceed about 37C in my current Norco case.
- buy 1 additional 4TB drive (I have 7@3TB drives in my production pool) and upgrade 1 3TB drive in production pool
- replace 3TB drive with new 4TB drive with the REPLACE command
- wait for resilver to complete
- swap a 4TB drive with the now available 3TB drive in backup pool
- replace 4TB drive with 3TB drive with the REPLACE command
- wait for resilver to complete
- repeat process until all drives are swapped (this will take a "bit" of time...)
The SuperMicro case (847E16 with SAS2 expander backplanes and 9211-8i) that I am looking at allows for 36 hot swap drive bays and 4 internal 2.5" drive bays. It also has 2 6core Xeon 5645 CPUs and 64GB of Registered ECC ram. So, this proposed new case would still allow me to grow both the backup and production pools with another 6 drives each if/when I need to add space. Only crappy part of the plan is that the 4 internal 2.5" drives are not easy to get to, so they would be an offline swap if required. Not the end of the world as they only run jails (mirrored pool, replicated to production pool) and store the system dataset (mirrored pool, total overkill but I had old 80GB SSDs lying around).
I still plan to boot from mirrored USB keys.
So, is my plan above fraught with dangers or does it make some sense? Is there a better way that I should approach this (without buying additional drives)?
Appreciate any feedback.
Cheers,
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