Expanding ZFS Storage with More Drives
May I successively add a new hdd to an existing pool? | Proxmox Support Forum
Add third drive to a zfs mirror possible?
ZFS multiple vdev pool expansion
Hi, i have a zfs mirror of 4TB drives and i want to add a third 4TB drive. Is it possible to turn zfs mirror to raid z1 without loosing my data?
Update:
so i know i cant turn a mirror to a z1 but how hard is it to add drives to raid z1? for example from 3 to 4
Hi guys! I almost finished my home NAS and now choosing the best topology for the main data pool. For now I have 4 HDDs, 10 Tb each. For the moment raidz1 with a single vdev seems the best choice but considering the possibility of future storage expansion and the ability to expand the pool I also consider a 2 vdev raidz1 configuration. If I understand correctly, this gives more iops/write speed. So my questions on the matter are:
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If now I build a raidz1 with 2 vdevs 2 disks wide (getting around 17.5 TiB of capacity) and somewhere in the future I buy 2 more drives of the same capacity, will I be able to expand each vdev to width of 3 getting about 36 TiB?
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If the answer to the first question is “Yes, my dude”, will this work with adding only one drive to one of the vdevs in the pool so one of them is 3 disks wide and another one is 2? If not, is there another topology that allows something like that? Stripe of vdevs?
I used zfs for some time but only as a simple raidz1, so not much practical knowledge was accumulated. The host system is truenas, if this is important.
Hello, I am going to migrate from synology for good. I am doing a research on hardware, NAS software. I will upgrada my disks to larger ones but new disk will cost as much as or more than the hardware.
One of my biggest gripe with Truenas is upfront cost of forcefully buying all disks initially as far as I know. To the best of my knowledge disk can not be added to previously created vdevs. New vdevs must be created. Large disks are very very expensive. I usually buy a machine with lots of slots, and setup up the machine with raid 5 with 3 disks, add more disks when I have budget and need and convert to raid 6 in time. Synology gives this opportunity with SHR. Normal linux raid structures as well.
One of the comments that I received to a question about Truenas that it can now extend the vdevs.
Is this capability currently available? It there a gotcha, restriction that I need to know. How is the reliability of this new feature if it truely exists?
You can't extend the existing raidz1 vdev by adding another disk but you can add another vdev to the pool to increase the pool's capacity. You'll need more than one additional disk if you want to retain redundancy. For example, you could use two disks to add a mirror vdev or 3+ disks for another raidz1 vdev.
I know this question is old, but I just came across it. It looks like the ability to extend a RAIDZ one drive at a time is in the works! No ETA that I've seen though.
https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/blog/openzfs-raid-z-online-expansion-project-announcement/
Hi, I have build a storage for my backups (thus no high IO requirements) using old 3x 4TB drives in a raidz1 pool. Works pretty well so far: backup data is copied to the system, then a snapshot is created etc
Now I came to have another 4x 3TB drives and I'm thinking of adding them (or maybe only 3 as I currently have only 6 SATA ports on the MB) to the exiting pool instead of building a separate pool.
Why ? Because I'd rather extend the size of the pool rather than have to think about which pool I would copy the data to (why have /backup1 and /backup2 when you could have big /backup ?)
How ? I've read that a clever partitioning way would be to create 3TB partitions on the 4TB disks, then out of these and the 3TB disks create a 6x3TB raidz1. The remaining 3x1TB from the 4TB disks could be used as a separate raidz1, and extended in case I come to more 4TB disks.
Problem: the 4TB disks currently have a single 4TB partition on them, are in an existing raidz1. Means I would have to resize the partitions down to 3TB *w/o* loosing data.
Question: Is this somehow feasible in place ("in production"), meaning without copying all the data to a temp disk, recreating the zraid1, and then moving the data back ?
Many thanks
PS : it's about recycling the old HDDs I have. Buying new drives is out of scope
Scenario...(I assume 3+ drives is going to be required for this scenario, not 2)...
I have 3 individual ZFS drives/partitions, which would be three vdev's.
Is it possible to pool the three drives/vdev's into a single pool without destroying the data?
I'm thinking of beginning my ZFS journey one step at a time, and wanted to start with individual ZFS drives/vdevs first. Then later, as I know more, plan more, buy more drives, then create the ZFS pool for full RAIDZ protection.
If not capable now, will the upcoming RAIDZ expansion have the capability of merging drives into a new pool, without data loss?
Or is ZFS storage planning set in stone? And I better know what I want, because there's no way to change the storage?