Replacing drives to bigger capacity doesn't show on WinShare

[Eli Singer]

I had a 6 8TB drive array in my FreeNAS.
I've just now replaced two drives to 10TB using replace-resilver.

As shown in the pics, on the windows machine nothing changed when accesing the FreeNAS and i can't seem to find where can i change the volume size to the maximum or the WinShare size accordingly.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Eli

 

[Basil Hendroff]

You need to replace all disks for the pool to grow. Refer to https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2/storage.html#replacing-disks-to-grow-a-pool

 

[Johnnie Black]

I've just now replaced two drives to 10TB using replace-resilver.

You'll need to replace them all for the available storage to increase.

 

[Eli Singer]

But i don't want (and can't) replace all disks at once. Isn't there a way to tell FreeNAS to expand the volume according to the actual disks that are installed? I can't see the reason why it would have to make me replace ALL the disks...

I do have 2 more 10TB disks that i can utilize if that helps somehow, but they can't be permanently in the NAS.

Thanks,

Eli

 

[Basil Hendroff]

Your path of least resistance: If you revert back to a 6 x 8TB RAIDZ2 vdev in the pool, you can add a second 10TB mirror vdev to the pool. To understand why this works review ZFS Storage Design

 

[Eli Singer]

I don't understand how that helps. eventually i will need to have X4 8TB and X2 10TB, how could i lose the 2 8TB later on?

And actually in any case, i can't put the two 8TB back in because tomorrow they have to be installed in a different machine.

 

[Johnnie Black]

I can't see the reason why it would have to make me replace ALL the disks...

Because that's how zfs works, raidz can't use extra space from only some disks, it's either all or none.

 

[Basil Hendroff]

Review the links to understand what you can and can't do...
Replacing Disks to Grow a Pool
ZFS Storage Design

Basically, there are only two ways at present to grow a pool:

1. Replace ALL disks in a vdev with larger capacity disks; and/or
2. Add another vdev to the pool.

 

[Chris Moore]

Any help would be much appreciated.

Sorry to put it this way, but did you read the documentation? Please review these resources:

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/

The 'Hidden' Cost of Using ZFS for Your Home NAS
https://louwrentius.com/the-hidden-cost-of-using-zfs-for-your-home-nas.html

 

[Eli Singer]

Well, I have read the links.
I remember the slideshow from when i initially setup my system :) Very helpful indeed.
I didn't remember that I can only upgrade capacity if i do that for all drives.
That is actually quite an annoyance... I don't know what is the technical reason for that, but I'll just have to make due with it.

Thanks for all the advice.

If we're already here, I'm trying to plan ahead, does the IBM m1015 supports SMART in FreeNAS properly? If so, that would be a good way to add drives...

Thanks,

Eli

 

[Chris Moore]

I don't know what is the technical reason for that, but I'll just have to make due with it.

It is because data is written across all drives, so there needs to be an equal amount of space on all the drives. It can't just write to the two drives that have more space. It must be able to write to them all equally.

does the IBM m1015 supports SMART in FreeNAS properly?

Yes, with the latest IT mode firmware, but you might want to get a slightly newer card as that one is PCI-E 2.0 and there are plenty of cards available now that are PCI-E 3.0. Like this one, just as an example:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-H220-6Gbps-SAS-PCI-E-3-0-HBA-LSI-9207-8i-P20-IT-Mode-for-ZFS-FreeNAS-unRAID/162862201664
Although, you can save a few dollars with the older chipset card and it works about as well, unless you have somewhere around 36 drives connected to it, then you start to get a bottleneck.
This Dell card is the same chipset as that IBM 1015 card:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-H200-6Gbps-SAS-HBA-LSI-9210-8i-9211-8i-P20-IT-Mode-ZFS-FreeNAS-unRAID/163142320696
Or this one from Lenovo (IBM):
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-924...A-P20-IT-Mode-ZFS-FreeNAS-unRAID/163600383999
There are a variety of options.

PS. I trust the seller at Art of Server to actually deliver the correct and fully updated firmware. Some of the other vendors, I don't trust them as much because I have been disappointed. It is a nice thing to not need to spend the time and effort updating the firmware yourself. Well worth a few dollars more, unless you just dig that kind of thing.