Critical: Capacity at 91%

[Chris230291]

Hello. FreeNAS is telling me "CRITICAL: The capacity for the volume 'Raid-Set' is currently at 91%, while the recommended value is below 80%." However in Windows Explorer it shows me loads of free space?

Is there anything I can do to determine exactly how much space I have used? I have scrubbed my pool several times but the number hasn't changed. Perhaps I have a wrong setting entered somewhere?

While I'm here, I was thinking it would be awesome to add a file explorer into the FreeNAS web GUI in a future release. Maybe this is possible?

Any advice is welcome,
Chris.

 

[ser_rhaegar]

How big is your pool?

It looks like you have quotas on your dataset which will skew you view in Windows. A good place to look would be the Web GUI.

 

[Chris230291]

How big is your pool?

It looks like you have quotas on your dataset which will skew you view in Windows. A good place to look would be the Web GUI.

Hello. I have 8 X 2TB drives in a RAIDZ.
Having quotas sounds like what might be happening. How could I check that?

Cheers,
Chris.

 

[ser_rhaegar]

That gives you roughly 12.73TiB. You have 884GB free out of that according to your screenshot. This is definitely less than 10% free, hence the warnings.

 

[Chris230291]

Ok, so should I try to keep the capacity at lower than 80% or doesn't it matter?
What would be the best way to add storage to the server? From what I understand it's not ideal to add storage to an existing pool because it messes up the parity?

Cheers,
Chris.

 

[gpsguy]

Sure it matters. Let it go to 100% and you'll find out that you can't easily delete files.

At some point, performance will tank.

There are a couple of ways to expand your pool. You could replace your current disks one by one with larger disks and after the last disk finished resilvering, the available storage would expand automatically.

That being said, you currently have 8 disks using RAIDz1. That's not optimal, nor recommended. You might want to consider something like 6x4Tb RAIDz2 and migrate your data to the new volume. After the data was moved, you could re-use your existing 2Tb drives and extend your volume by adding a second RAIDz2 vdev using 6x2Tb drives.

 

[Chris230291]

Sure it matters. Let it go to 100% and you'll find out that you can't easily delete files.

At some point, performance will tank.

There are a couple of ways to expand your pool. You could replace your current disks one by one with larger disks and after the last disk finished resilvering, the available storage would expand automatically.

That being said, you currently have 8 disks using RAIDz1. That's not optimal, nor recommended. You might want to consider something like 6x4Tb RAIDz2 and migrate your data to the new volume. After the data was moved, you could re-use your existing 2Tb drives and extend your volume by adding a second RAIDz2 vdev using 6x2Tb drives.

Ok I will make sure not to fill it up any more.
Whichever way I expand my storage, I'd like to be able to reuse all/most of my disks if possible.

So a RAIDz2 will allow 2 disk failures before data is lost, just like a RAID 6? Is there any particular reason you suggested 6 drives and at the capacity (4tb) you did? Would I not be better off getting more 2tb drives?
I'm not sure I fully understand what a vdev is, even though I had a look through that slideshow that someone on this forums made. What happens to the parity when another vdev is added?

Cheers,
Chris.

 

[Ericloewe]

Ok I will make sure not to fill it up any more.
Whichever way I expand my storage, I'd like to be able to reuse all/most of my disks if possible.

So a RAIDz2 will allow 2 disk failures before data is lost, just like a RAID 6? Is there any particular reason you suggested 6 drives and at the capacity (4tb) you did? Would I not be better off getting more 2tb drives?
I'm not sure I fully understand what a vdev is, even though I had a look through that slideshow that someone on this forums made. What happens to the parity when another vdev is added?

Cheers,
Chris.

I suggest you re-read that presentation carefully. It answers your questions.

Anyway, RAIDZ1 is equivalent to RAID5, Z2 is equivalent to RAID6 and Z3 does something RAID doesn't.

RAIDZ1s are not recommended, but should have 3, 5 or 9 disks.
RAIDZ2s should have 4, 6 or 10 disks.
RAIDZ3s should have 5, 7 or 11 disks.

 

[Chris230291]

Ok so I have reread that slideshow 3 times now.
At the moment I have one vdev in my pool? (8 x 2TB drives in RAIDz)
Adding a second vdev will doubles the chance of failure?
In what you suggested I will have 2 vdevs in my new pool, meaning 2 lots of RAID joined together? (halving the parity?)

I want to make sure I understand before I decide what I need to buy and why.

 

[gpsguy]

If you did as I suggested and created a new 6x4Tb RAIDz2, you should be able to migrate all of your existing data to the new pool. As you can see from Ericloewe's message, 6 disks is an optimal configuration for RAIDz2. Once you confirmed everything was working okay, you could extend the original pool with a 6x2Tb RAIDz2 vdev, utilizing your original disks.

Yes, the two would be joined together, but you'd have 2 parity drives for each vdev. Adding a second vdev doesn't double the chance of failure - the concern is whether a given vdev fails. That's why it's suggested to go with RAIDz2 (or z3).

 

[Chris230291]

OK cool.
So adding more vdevs does increase the chance of failure, but my vdevs are now "stronger" because they would be z2 instead of z1, making the chance of total failure much less?

I also have a question regarding the export recycling bin option. I have it enabled and I have always deleted the ".recycling" folder in Windows explorer, assuming that "empties" it. Does that actually delete the trash or was I supposed to do it via the FreeNAS shell? I'm just wondering if I could be losing space because of "lost" trash?

Cheers,
Chris.