SOLVED upgrade questing if I understand it

[brainbuddy]

Hello

I want to upgrade my storage and I have read the from Cyberjock and I just want to be sure I understand everything right before I want to do it.
I have currently 2x 3TB HDD in my system that are in mirror. I want to upgrade them to 4 and run them in raid-z2 (because 4 is the minimum amount of drive that you can use)
in order to do this I need to store all the data that is on those drive to different drives and clear everything that is on those.
then put those 4 drive in me FreeNAs and create them as a Vdev. If i remember it right I can add up to 11 drives to a Vdev until I need to a extra Vdev to the same Zpool

 

[hugovsky]

You need to backup all your data to an external device so you can destroy your current vdev and create a new one. Then copy all data back in.

 

[Dice]

If i remember it right I can add up to 11 drives to a Vdev

Sort of yes. More importantly however - you cannot add single drives into an existing vdev configured as raidz1,2,3.

 

[brainbuddy]

You need to backup all your data to an external device so you can destroy your current vdev and create a new one. Then copy all data back in.

yes that what I already said in the post

Sort of yes. More importantly however - you cannot add single drives into an existing vdev configured as raidz1,2,3.

okay... but when you look indo the slideshow page 24 you see that he says that it is possible??
what do you recommend for me then?

 

[danb35]

More importantly however - you cannot add single drives into an existing vdev configured as raidz1,2,3

Well, you can, you just don't want to.

Edit: Just noticed "vdev" in there. Right, you can't add a single disk to (say) a RAIDZ1 vdev, to turn a three-disk RAIDZ1 vdev into a four-disk RAIDZ1 vdev. You can add a single disk to the pool, but it will be in its own vdev, and striped with the RAIDZ1 vdev, which is why such a configuration is technically known as Hating Your Data (tm).

 

[brainbuddy]

Well, you can, you just don't want to.

why not?

 

[danb35]

See my edit; I misread @Dice's post. You can't add single drives to a vdev (e.g., to turn a three-disk RAIDZ1 vdev into a four-disk RAIDZ1 vdev), but you can add single disks to your pool. You don't want to do that, though, because you'd have no redundancy for that disk. Refer to Example 4 on page 21 of the powerpoint.

Page 24 is saying that you can expand your vdev by replacing smaller disks with larger ones. If you have a 3 x 2 TB RAIDZ1 vdev, you can replace each of those 2 TB disks with 4 TB disks, and double the capacity.

 

[brainbuddy]

See my edit; I misread @Dice's post. You can't add single drives to a vdev (e.g., to turn a three-disk RAIDZ1 vdev into a four-disk RAIDZ1 vdev), but you can add single disks to your pool. You don't want to do that, though, because you'd have no redundancy for that disk. Refer to Example 4 on page 21 of the powerpoint.

Page 24 is saying that you can expand your vdev by replacing smaller disks with larger ones. If you have a 3 x 2 TB RAIDZ1 vdev, you can replace each of those 2 TB disks with 4 TB disks, and double the capacity.

okay thanks I misunderstood the slideshow then.
thanks!
P.S is it just me or is FreeNAS a bitch when I comes to upgrading your storage?
P.S.S so all that other stuff I had right about upgrading?

 

[danb35]

P.S.S so all that other stuff I had right about upgrading?

I think so--you already understand that you need to back up, destroy the pool, rebuilt as RAIDZ2, and restore. From there, you can safely increase your pool size by either replacing the disks in your RAIDZ2 with larger ones, or by adding a second RAIDZ2 vdev.

P.S is it just me or is freenas a bunny when I comes to upgrading your storage?

I'm not quite sure what this means. It's possible to do some dangerous things, though FreeNAS will generally try to warn you first. It does not let you expand vdevs with additional disks, which is unfortunate, but is a ZFS limitation.