Want to be sure: It's still not possible to add disks to a vdev with TrueNAS 13?

[cdog89]

HW: MSI Z390, Intel I9-9900K, 48Gb DDR4-3000, (4) 14Tb HDs in vdev1, Intel NIC 1000bT, 256Gb boot
SW: TrueNAS 13.0

I read through Cyberjock's excellent summary guide 9.10. I noobly used only (4) drives when first setting up the NAS, only to discover that had I added in (2) more, the storage space would've been greatly expanded. I wanted to confirm that the same is true for the current version of TrueNAS: I cannot add more hard drives to the current vdev. If I have to expand the pool storage capacity, I need to create another vdev and add it to the pool?

TIA!

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

If your vdev happens to be of type RAIDZn, then yes, this is still true. You would have read on Ars Technica, Heise News, Phoronix, ZDnet, ... literally everywhere, if ZFS RAIDZ expansion had been releases in the meantime

 

[cdog89]

If your vdev happens to be of type RAIDZn, then yes, this is still true. You would have read on Ars Technica, Heise News, Phoronix, ZDnet, ... literally everywhere, if ZFS RAIDZ expansion had been releases in the meantime

Thank you Patrick. I just wanted to confirm this was true. As you look to be a veteran and perhaps can take another minute to answer another question: I am very experienced with HW management using imaging, cloning, etc. with non-RAIDed/ZFS drives, but have almost no experience doing the same with RAID/ZFS configurations. Is it possible to 'image' a vdev to another vdev in TrueNAS? E.g. If I setup another vdev2 with (6) or (8) drives, can I 'image' vdev1 to vdev2 before wiping vdev1 and have vdev2 operate seamlessly (with all jails, etc. still work)?

Thanks again for your time.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Is it possible to 'image' a vdev to another vdev in TrueNAS? E.g. If I setup another vdev2 with (6) or (8) drives, can I 'image' vdev1 to vdev2 before wiping vdev1 and have vdev2 operate seamlessly (with all jails, etc. still work)?

Sure, that's a core feature of ZFS and TrueNAS. Look at Periodic Snapshot Tasks and Periodic Replication Tasks in the UI. You can replicate a hierarchy of datasets recursively with all data and attributes included.

 

[cdog89]

Sure, that's a core feature of ZFS and TrueNAS. Look at Periodic Snapshot Tasks and Periodic Replication Tasks in the UI. You can replicate a hierarchie of datasets recursively with all data and attributes included.

Thank you!

 

[cdog89]

Sure, that's a core feature of ZFS and TrueNAS. Look at Periodic Snapshot Tasks and Periodic Replication Tasks in the UI. You can replicate a hierarchy of datasets recursively with all data and attributes included.

@Patrick: Ok, just to be sure I understood you clearly: I can create a vdev2, restore/copy a vdev1 snapshot to vdev2, wipe vdev1, add more disks to vdev1's original disk array, recreate vdev1 with the (now) larger disk array, then restore a current vdev2 snapshot over to the (now) larger capacity vdev1?

Last question, I promise.

 

[Davvo]

@cdog89 you need a new pool.

1. Snapshot pool1
2. Replicate snap1 to pool2
3. Destroy pool1 after verifying data integrity
4. Create (bigger) pool1
5. Snapshot pool2
6. Replicate snap2 to (bigger) pool1
7. Destroy pool2 after verifying data integrity

You most likely want the snapshots to be recursive.
And you can always expand the available space in the VDEV by replacing all drives of said VDEV with bigger ones (there is a procedure to follow, don't just jank them off) without moving any data.

 

[cdog89]

@cdog89 you need a new pool.

1. Snapshot pool1
2. Replicate snap1 to pool2
3. Destroy pool1 after verifying data integrity
4. Create (bigger) pool1
5. Snapshot pool2
6. Replicate snap2 to (bigger) pool1
7. Destroy pool2 after verifying data integrity

You most likely want the snapshots to be recursive.
And you can always expand the available space in the VDEV by replacing all drives of said VDEV with bigger ones (there is a procedure to follow, don't just jank them off) without moving any data.

@Davvo - Thanks for taking a minute to spell this out, step-by-step. That makes complete sense. From a minimal cost perspective and since I only have about 5Tb of data so far, it seems pool2 can suffice as a (2) drive zf2 pool of at least 5Tb or more (which I can easily do with spare drives I have on hand). I can then add the (2) extra, more costly 14Tb drives to pool1, replicating as necessary between the 2 pools.

Again, thanks! Have a great day.