Swaping bigger drives to increase pool size - No SATA ports!

[kirkdickinson]

I am wanting to replace 6 8TB drives with 6 16TB drives to increase the pool in one of my TrueNAS boxes.

I went to install the first drive in my Backup server only to realize that I can't do an "in place replacement" the way it is configured. I don't have any open SATA slots. I have 2 DOMS and 6 drives plugged in. What is the safest way to to swap them at this point?


I have this motherboard in there: https://www.newegg.com/supermicro-m...entium/p/N82E16813182996?Item=N82E16813182996


Thanks,


Kirk

 

[danb35]

What is the safest way to to swap them at this point?

If the two DOMs are for a mirrored boot device, the safest is probably to offline one of them, use its port for the replacement drives, and then do the "replace in place" procedure. If not, you'll need to offline one of the pool disks in order to replace it, and then repeat for the rest of them--but you will be down one disk's redundancy throughout the procedure.

 

[Jailer]

Your only option is to replace them one drive at a time the same as you would as if you were replacing a failed drive.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

If the two DOMs are for a mirrored boot device, the safest is probably to offline one of them, use its port for the replacement drives, and then do the "replace in place" procedure. If not, you'll need to offline one of the pool disks in order to replace it, and then repeat for the rest of them--but you will be down one disk's redundancy throughout the procedure.

I'd do a S.M.A.R.T. report first, and if all is well a scrub and another S.M.A.R.T. report, and if all is well do as @danb35 suggests.

If something looked fishy there's possibly a third option: buy a used LSI HBA ($30) and cables ($20) and possibly a cage and fan ($70), and stick a set of drives external until the transfer is done. It works great and is impressively fast, but there is some expense and time involved in the setup.

 

[kirkdickinson]

If the two DOMs are for a mirrored boot device, the safest is probably to offline one of them, use its port for the replacement drives, and then do the "replace in place" procedure. If not, you'll need to offline one of the pool disks in order to replace it, and then repeat for the rest of them--but you will be down one disk's redundancy throughout the procedure.

Yes they are mirrored.

 

[kirkdickinson]

Sorry, I should have mentioned at the first, I am running the 6 drives in Z2. I just had successful short and long SMART tests on all drives. The pool is healthy.

 

[kirkdickinson]

I'd do a S.M.A.R.T. report first, and if all is well a scrub and another S.M.A.R.T. report, and if all is well do as @danb35 suggests.

If something looked fishy there's possibly a third option: buy a used LSI HBA ($30) and cables ($20) and possibly a cage and fan ($70), and stick a set of drives external until the transfer is done. It works great and is impressively fast, but there is some expense and time involved in the setup.

Something like this?

LSI 6Gbps SAS HBA 9200-8i IT Mode ZFS FreeNAS unRAID + 2*SFF-8087 SATA | eBay

Fastest and safest way for making a. arrived at our warehouse. We are convinced you will.

www.ebay.com

I have two available hot swap slots in my case, but no cables to hook them up.

 

[NickF]

You don’t really need to buy something. You can mark a drive as failed…add new one to pool…wait for resilver…mark a drive as failed…add new one to the pool…wait to resilver etc.


With a raidz2 on a pool with regular scrubs and smart reports? No prob. Just will take you a few weeks.


Without another computer to borrow for a couple days you don’t really have another option anyway.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

Something like this?

LSI 6Gbps SAS HBA 9200-8i IT Mode ZFS FreeNAS unRAID + 2*SFF-8087 SATA | eBay

Fastest and safest way for making a. arrived at our warehouse. We are convinced you will.

www.ebay.com

I have two available hot swap slots in my case, but no cables to hook them up.

Something like that, though that one looks like a Chinese clone; maybe clones are okay, personally i don't trust them. I prefer server pulls and have had good luck with them.

There are a few pros if you go that way, you can build/optimize the new vdev any way you want since it's new with no data, the new volume will be defragmented and the transfer is fast, plus it's minimal box fajiggering if that matters, so if you're a tech guy and will get more use from the equipment it may be worth it, otherwise the one drive at a time swap works.

I've listed several cable sources in previous posts dependent on connection type, all affordable.

 

[kirkdickinson]

I started replacing drives today. On the backup server, I didn't have a spare SATA port, so I offlined one 8TB WD drive, installed the new (tested) Seagate 16 TB drive, then clicked replace and selected that new drive. That seemed like a fairly smooth operation. (except my pool is degraded during the resilver)


Shows estimated 5+ hours for resilver.

I have extra SATA slots in my older production system, (da4) so I installed the 8TB WD drive in an open slot, found the drive that was kicking all the S.M.A.R.T errors, and used the replace in place function.


At first it told me that it was going to take 19 days to replace it, but this is what it shows now:

Wondering why it is taking longer to replace in place than a resilver from scratch?

Why does one system name the drives ada1... and the other names them only da1...
The system that is naming da only is one that I built 8 years ago that has been upgraded from FreeNAS. It calls the DOM boot drive ada0 and the pool drives da1... etc... The TrueNAS from the start calls all drives ada0... ada0 and ada1 and the pool drives are ada2 - ada7

 

[sretalla]

Why does one system name the drives ada1... and the other names them only da1...

SAS (SCSI) vs SATA.

Wondering why it is taking longer to replace in place than a resilver from scratch?

Ignore the estimates, it probably isn't.

That seemed like a fairly smooth operation. (except my pool is degraded during the resilver)

The correct way to read that is "as soon as I took a disk offline in my pool, it was degraded".

 

[Whattteva]

Why does one system name the drives ada1... and the other names them only da1...

Driver difference. da is driving the older drives that uses parallel ATA interface whereas ada (advanced da) is for newer drives that uses AHCI controller interface.

 

[kirkdickinson]

Driver difference. da is driving the older drives that uses parallel ATA interface whereas ada (advanced da) is for newer drives that uses AHCI controller interface.

Thanks that makes sense. :)

 

[kirkdickinson]

SAS (SCSI) vs SATA.


Ignore the estimates, it probably isn't.


The correct way to read that is "as soon as I took a disk offline in my pool, it was degraded".

All my drives are SATA. I don't have any SAS drives. :)

 

[sretalla]

All my drives are SATA. I don't have any SAS drives. :)

I'm talking about the controller, not the drives (SAS can take both types of drive).