Building a pool with one slightly different drive

Cryovenom

Cadet
Joined
Jan 20, 2020
Messages
2
Hi Guys,

I'm trying to create a pool with 8 SSDs that I have. 7 of them are identical, at 223.57GB. One of them is newer and has slightly more space at 232.89GB.

I honestly don't care about "losing" the 9GB from the newer drive. I gain way more by having the 8th drive in the pool at the smaller size.

But the UI refuses to let me create the pool! Creating the pool at the size of the smallest drive is fine by me.

It also concerns me because let's say I leave out that 8th drive and just create the pool with the 7 identical ones. What happens in the future if one of those drives dies and needs to be replaced? That drive is NLA, I don't know that I'll find one identically sized one anywhere. Would I be SOL and unable to replace it with a larger drive?

See attached screenshot.

Cheers,

Jon
 

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woods

Dabbler
Joined
Jul 27, 2018
Messages
45
I'm a complete noob, but I did read something about this yesterday:


But don't just go and do it manually on my word, I hope someone more knowledgeable joins the discussion to make sure you're not making a mistake.

Perhaps this is what you're looking for:

After a vdev is created, more drives cannot be added to that vdev. However, a new vdev can be striped with another of the same type of existing vdev to increase the overall size of the volume.
 

Cryovenom

Cadet
Joined
Jan 20, 2020
Messages
2
Interesting. It looks like I accidentally downloaded and installed 11.3RC1 instead of 11.2U7. The docs for 11.3 don't show a manual creation section so maybe it hasn't been implemented yet.

I guess I'll reformat and downgrade my server to 11.2U7 and make a manual volume/pool then.

Thanks!
 

Baenwort

Explorer
Joined
Feb 19, 2015
Messages
93
Did you chase down and put in a bug report about your case?
 

efigalaxie

Cadet
Joined
Feb 3, 2020
Messages
9
I have tried to do this as well. 11.3 is what is delivered from the main download page and is what I have installed.

As of this time.....The GUI will NOT allow a disk of slighly differing size from the others. Being new, I have not added to an existing pool or simply replaced and resilvered.
 

woods

Dabbler
Joined
Jul 27, 2018
Messages
45
not sure about how it *should* work but in my case I made my vdevs with identical drives and then replaced a few faulty ones with bigger ones. The volume will only increase when all the drives are larger.
 

efigalaxie

Cadet
Joined
Feb 3, 2020
Messages
9
I am even newer, but I am gathering that there is a bug in 11.3. There was an option in older versions to force the issue.
 

woods

Dabbler
Joined
Jul 27, 2018
Messages
45
oh weird. I did read the 11.3 manual to figure out how to add one bigger drive. Perhaps I skimped over the part where it says you should be able to force it
 

blueether

Patron
Joined
Aug 6, 2018
Messages
259
I am even newer, but I am gathering that there is a bug in 11.3. There was an option in older versions to force the issue.
Well it's not a bug, it is intended to behave as it does in 11.3. I think there is a open bug report for it though and if enough people start to complain that they can nolonger create vdevs it might get rolled back
 

Baenwort

Explorer
Joined
Feb 19, 2015
Messages
93
Well it's not a bug, it is intended to behave as it does in 11.3. I think there is a open bug report for it though and if enough people start to complain that they can nolonger create vdevs it might get rolled back

Can you link to the bug report?

I think I should be able to choose to have it make a vDev that is the size of the smallest drive. With many SSDs you won't get a exact size match.
 

blueether

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Aug 6, 2018
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diedrichg

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blueether

Patron
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Aug 6, 2018
Messages
259
good news
 

Baenwort

Explorer
Joined
Feb 19, 2015
Messages
93
it seems like they are putting limits on how large of a difference between drives?

I don't mind not getting all the space if I make one with the intention of finishing the expansion later.
 

HeadCase

Dabbler
Joined
Jan 1, 2013
Messages
14
I see that 11.3-u2 restores ability to use different size disks in same vdev. I didn't found when it was removed? Just updated 11.2-u3 to 11.2-u8 and I'm planning to change my two 3disk raidz1 to one 6disk raidz2. But one of the 3tb hdds has been replaced with 4tb disk and i'm now affraid that will it cause problem to me with this 11.2u8?
 

blueether

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Aug 6, 2018
Messages
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I see that 11.3-u2 restores ability to use different size disks in same vdev. I didn't found when it was removed? Just updated 11.2-u3 to 11.2-u8 and I'm planning to change my two 3disk raidz1 to one 6disk raidz2. But one of the 3tb hdds has been replaced with 4tb disk and i'm now affraid that will it cause problem to me with this 11.2u8?
11.2U8 should be fine I think, it was rolled out in to the 11.3 release
 

JasonP123456

Cadet
Joined
Aug 4, 2018
Messages
9
So, is there a way to set up a vdev of different size disks or do we have to wait till 11.3-U2 is released? I am currently on 11.3-U1. If there is, how is it done?
 

sretalla

Powered by Neutrality
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Jan 1, 2016
Messages
9,702
zpool create <poolname> raidz2 /dev/da1 /dev/da2 /dev/da3 /dev/da4 (obviously replace those daX references with the disks you want in your pool)

zpool export <poolname>

Import the pool at the CLI (Storage | Pools | Add | Imort from Existing)

Note: Doing it this way does not create the Swap partitions on each disk. If you already have a pool with disks created at the GUI, that's probably fine, but if this will be your only pool, consider looking up the more detailed process of creating the partitions manually and then adding the rawuuid of the second (data) partition instead of daX format
 

JasonP123456

Cadet
Joined
Aug 4, 2018
Messages
9
zpool create <poolname> raidz2 /dev/da1 /dev/da2 /dev/da3 /dev/da4 (obviously replace those daX references with the disks you want in your pool)

zpool export <poolname>

Import the pool at the CLI (Storage | Pools | Add | Imort from Existing)

Note: Doing it this way does not create the Swap partitions on each disk. If you already have a pool with disks created at the GUI, that's probably fine, but if this will be your only pool, consider looking up the more detailed process of creating the partitions manually and then adding the rawuuid of the second (data) partition instead of daX format

I actually just was able to get it done 5 minutes before your reply. I still had a 11.2-U8 boot environment. So I had one of those "What if" moments. I activated it, rebooted, made the pool under 11.2-U8, and reactivated the 11.3-U1 boot environment. When I rebooted back to 11.3-U1, it was there along with my original pool automatically. It was actually pretty easy. I knew there was a reason to keep old boot environments. I did save my configuration first before the changes just in case things didn't work.
 
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