Hi all,
Firstly, a little backstory that has lead to my question today. I am a network engineer by trade, so some of the concepts of ZFS and storage are new but, being a good nerd I can't help dabbling.
I'm running FreeNAS-9.2.1.9-RELEASE-x64 for my home storage - pretty simple setup; SMB shares & a few jails. I didn't plan my storage requirements very well - I have 3 x 2TB drives in RAIDZ1 - and now it is very close to full. Facepalm for leaving this issue until 1 minute to midnight!
I've been exploring my options for increasing the size of my ZFS pool, sticking to RAIDZ1 (Home use, little redundancy is fine). I'd like to add two more 2TB drives, for total 5 x 2TB RAIDZ1. Figuring my two options are;
A) Remove all data, backup settings & data in jails. Trash existing Volume, add drives and create new Volume. Restore data. Setup jails again, restore backups.
B) Expand existing Volume.
Moving the data will be a pain, as I will need to buy a 4TB+ drive for the single purpose of backing up all the data temporarily. Then it will have no use. So, option A is both time consuming and introduces additional expense.
Speaking with a Sys Admin at the office, they seemed to believe that it could be possible to expand the existing Volume with additional drives. This doesn't seem possible via the FreeNAS web GUI, however may be possible from the CLI. I've done some researching about expanding a FreeBSD ZFS volume, but mostly am finding articles about replacing existing disks with larger ones.
So, is it possible to add additional disks to a ZFS volume, and expand the useable space while also sticking to RAIDZ1?
Thank you.
Firstly, a little backstory that has lead to my question today. I am a network engineer by trade, so some of the concepts of ZFS and storage are new but, being a good nerd I can't help dabbling.
I'm running FreeNAS-9.2.1.9-RELEASE-x64 for my home storage - pretty simple setup; SMB shares & a few jails. I didn't plan my storage requirements very well - I have 3 x 2TB drives in RAIDZ1 - and now it is very close to full. Facepalm for leaving this issue until 1 minute to midnight!
I've been exploring my options for increasing the size of my ZFS pool, sticking to RAIDZ1 (Home use, little redundancy is fine). I'd like to add two more 2TB drives, for total 5 x 2TB RAIDZ1. Figuring my two options are;
A) Remove all data, backup settings & data in jails. Trash existing Volume, add drives and create new Volume. Restore data. Setup jails again, restore backups.
B) Expand existing Volume.
Moving the data will be a pain, as I will need to buy a 4TB+ drive for the single purpose of backing up all the data temporarily. Then it will have no use. So, option A is both time consuming and introduces additional expense.
Speaking with a Sys Admin at the office, they seemed to believe that it could be possible to expand the existing Volume with additional drives. This doesn't seem possible via the FreeNAS web GUI, however may be possible from the CLI. I've done some researching about expanding a FreeBSD ZFS volume, but mostly am finding articles about replacing existing disks with larger ones.
So, is it possible to add additional disks to a ZFS volume, and expand the useable space while also sticking to RAIDZ1?
Thank you.