Purged
Cadet
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2015
- Messages
- 3
Hi All!
Let me start by saying that FreeNAS is proving to be the perfect solution for my needs, and these forums have been fantastic in learning the ropes.
I have read the cyberjock sticky explaining VDevs vs Zpools, etc above, but I want to make sure I do this right.
Here is my situation:
I wanted to test FreeNAS before investing in hard-drives, and although all of my hardware meets the minimum requirements, my storage capacity during my trial run is a single 120GB drive.
Now that I know FreeNAS will suit my needs, I'm ready to increase that storage capacity.
Right now, I can afford 3 WD Red 3TB drives, but my reading tells me that this will not be a good plan as RAIDZ1 is really not sufficient with current drive sizes.
It seems the only real option (since redundancy is important to me) is to get 5 3TB drives, even if it is a bit over budget for RAIDZ2. Is this correct?
Next, now that I've gotten a few jails going, with a couple plugins that suit my needs, I have realized that I would prefer not to just pull that drive and start fresh, but instead copy it to the new Zpool. So, will this be the correct operation to take?:
1) Leave current drive installed.
2) Add the 5 new drives in addition
3) Create new volume (RAIDZ2) with the new 5 drive array
4) Copy data from original volume to new volume
5) Shut down jails/plugins and update them to new location (is this even possible?)
6) Start up jails/plugins
7) Detach original volume
8) Pull original HDD
Now this might me just being OCD/ridiculous, but I'm curious... My original drive is in hotswap bay #1. The new array would use #2-6. After I pull #1, can I just pull #6 and put it in #1's place as to not have an empty first bay?
Lastly, I tried to find and understand this but I simply did not.. If I have 5 drives in RAIDZ2, can I simply add a drive to the VDev later easily to expand the capacity, or do I need an additional 5 to make an additional VDev?
Thanks in advance for your help, and I apologize if this should be more apparent to me, but I'm being cautious to ensure I do it correctly. Thanks again!
Let me start by saying that FreeNAS is proving to be the perfect solution for my needs, and these forums have been fantastic in learning the ropes.
I have read the cyberjock sticky explaining VDevs vs Zpools, etc above, but I want to make sure I do this right.
Here is my situation:
I wanted to test FreeNAS before investing in hard-drives, and although all of my hardware meets the minimum requirements, my storage capacity during my trial run is a single 120GB drive.
Now that I know FreeNAS will suit my needs, I'm ready to increase that storage capacity.
Right now, I can afford 3 WD Red 3TB drives, but my reading tells me that this will not be a good plan as RAIDZ1 is really not sufficient with current drive sizes.
It seems the only real option (since redundancy is important to me) is to get 5 3TB drives, even if it is a bit over budget for RAIDZ2. Is this correct?
Next, now that I've gotten a few jails going, with a couple plugins that suit my needs, I have realized that I would prefer not to just pull that drive and start fresh, but instead copy it to the new Zpool. So, will this be the correct operation to take?:
1) Leave current drive installed.
2) Add the 5 new drives in addition
3) Create new volume (RAIDZ2) with the new 5 drive array
4) Copy data from original volume to new volume
5) Shut down jails/plugins and update them to new location (is this even possible?)
6) Start up jails/plugins
7) Detach original volume
8) Pull original HDD
Now this might me just being OCD/ridiculous, but I'm curious... My original drive is in hotswap bay #1. The new array would use #2-6. After I pull #1, can I just pull #6 and put it in #1's place as to not have an empty first bay?
Lastly, I tried to find and understand this but I simply did not.. If I have 5 drives in RAIDZ2, can I simply add a drive to the VDev later easily to expand the capacity, or do I need an additional 5 to make an additional VDev?
Thanks in advance for your help, and I apologize if this should be more apparent to me, but I'm being cautious to ensure I do it correctly. Thanks again!
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