Upgrading an Existing 8 Disk FreeNAS, need to know expansion options

[Roveer]

So I have an 8 disk FreeNAS running as a backup server. It's holding copies of my work server and home NAS. It's kind of pieced together so it needs to be made better.
It's a VM with a HBA passthrough to an 8 drive external enclosure. Not what I want going forward.

So to make things simpler and more robust I want to consolidate into an inexpensive Dell R510 enclosure.

Considering that I have an 8 disk (2TB ea, 9.8TB Total Z2 array) I would like a little guidance on future expansion.

With 8 disks in a Z2 arrangement I've been told that I can't expand the array by adding more disks without destroying the array. If this is the case I'd like to know the following.

1. I've been told I can expand the array by replacing my 2TB disks with larger disks and once all 8 disks have been replaced the array will expand to the new size. True?

2. Should I buy and 8 bay R510 or a 12 Bay R510 considering my current array? If I go to 12 bays can I add hot spares to the existing 8 drive array? I could use the remaining bays for another smaller array for other purposes.

3. Without having to destroy and rebuild the array is there anything I'm missing in my knowledge or should consider? Use of this array is to hold images of my 2 locations at each location. So I have NAS's at both sites that hold data for both sites.

Thanks,

Roveer

 

[kdragon75]

I've been told that I can't expand the array by adding more disks without destroying the array.

This is untrue but it is against best practices. In a given pol you can add vdevs of any type. This has performance implications and reliability implications. Fo your stated use case performance will not be an issue unless you do something asinine. As for reliability, you can think of a pool as a RAID 0 of smaller RAID arrays. If any one of the sub arrays (vdevs) goes offline, you pool is gone.

1. I've been told I can expand the array by replacing my 2TB disks with larger disks and once all 8 disks have been replaced the array will expand to the new size. True?

Yes this is true and should be fairly safe with a RAIDz2. Just test/burn in any new disks and add one at a time. Be sure to verify the pool on ONLINE and HEALTHY before continuing with the next disk.

2. Should I buy and 8 bay R510 or a 12 Bay R510 considering my current array? If I go to 12 bays can I add hot spares to the existing 8 drive array? I could use the remaining bays for another smaller array for other purposes.

More bays are always better. I in fact have the 12 bay version with an x5670 CPU, 32GB of RAM, and 8 3TB drives in a RAID10 configuration. I can tell you the Dell H200 is a drop in replacement for the H700 and the cross flash works perfectly. The server also has two internal 2.5 bays perfect for boot/SLOG/L2ARC depending on your needs. the one issue is the power consumption. With a qle2564, 8 HDDs, 3 SSDs, and a 6 port 1gb card I can't get the idle below 183 watts as measured by the iDrac. Under load its about 220 watts.

 

[Chris Moore]

Yes, you can grow your storage by replacing the drives. Your current storage pool has one vdev of 8 disks, you can add hot spare disks, but you can't add storage disks.
If you were to get a chassis that would acomodate 16 drives, you can add a second vdev with another 8 drives to the current pool.
You have options. How much are you looking to add capacity wise and what budget do you have?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[Stux]

I’d consider adding a second 8-way Raidz2 vdev.

Would increase performance too.

You can still grow the array by replacing the 2TB disks in future too.

 

[kdragon75]

Come on you know you want a rack full of these...:D
NetApp DS4243 24 Bay Disk Drive Array

 

[southwow]

Can I suggest grabbing a supermicro 846 chassis and migrating your hardware into it? They can be had for cheap with the TQ backplane (individual connections for each disk) and they have redundant power supplies as well as plenty of room. All you'd is a SAS controller in IT mode, an expander, and some breakout cables.

The advantage to the TQ backplane is the capability to use SAS2 (certified) and SAS3 (not certified) speeds. The NetApp DiskShelf is a good enclosure above, but SAS speeds only.

I started with a 3-drive vdev and added vdevs (3 drives each) and then expanded it by increasing the size of the drives until I'd reached 15 x 8tb drives. I'm now in the same place and will be recreating my pool with some spare 8's.

An Example:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro...640796&hash=item2f1aaa07d7:g:eUoAAOSwzpFa9eBR

I just bought one (an older complete opteron server) from seller TAMSOLUTIONS and it was perfect.

 

[Chris Moore]

The advantage to the TQ backplane is the capability to use SAS2 (certified) and SAS3 (not certified) speeds.

Not only that, you can have some of those ports go to a SAS controller and other ports go to the integrated SATA controller on the system board. I have one of those 4U, 24bay, TQ backplane systems and it works nice, as long as you can deal with the cable clutter.

 

[southwow]

Not only that, you can have some of those ports go to a SAS controller and other ports go to the integrated SATA controller on the system board. I have one of those 4U, 24bay, TQ backplane systems and it works nice, as long as you can deal with the cable clutter.

Round cables completely solve the clutter issue. They end up being literally the same size as a mini-sas cable when tied together.

I'm now running two of them (one as freenas and the other as a storage enclosure linked to freenas by SFF-8088 cables) and they're great.

 

[Roveer]

Thanks for all the good suggestions. While a 24 bay enclosure certainly gets my Aarr arrr going it's probably too big my my needs. I'm also starting to consider power consumption as well. For 250 bucks I get get a simple Dell R510 12 bay enclosure which is nice and compact. I might even run it with only 1 cpu to save energy. It gives me upgrade opportunities even if I had to add an external enclosure in the future, but just increasing drive size in my 8TB ZFS2 array will probably keep me happy for many years. Considering this device is purely backup to other NAS's in my environment the only downside to rebuilding the array in order to increase size would be having to re-copy the data. The first 6TB's went pretty easy. Also I don't have a rack, but limited shelf space where we keep our computers so throwing a R510 on top of the R710 EXSi box probably works best.

 

[Inxsible]

While a 24 bay enclosure certainly gets my Aarr arrr going it's probably too big my my needs.

Good on you. Go with what you think you need now and for the next few years. If you are never going to fill up 24 drive bays, there is no point in going big for the sake of going big. Also the higher the number of drives, the more you have to think about the PSU being able to handle the start up load + the total power consumption of each drive thereby increasing the electricity bill.

I recently purchased a 12-bay Supermicro 826 chassis -- because combined with the 1U (4 drive) chassis that I already had, the 16 drives will suffice me for a very long time.