Does FreeNAS support hotswap drives?

[Johnathan Knight]

Hi all, I am very interested in getting a FreeNAS Server deployed however I have been told that hot swap is not supported on FreeNAS.

Just as a test I installed FreeNAS in a box at home with hot swap drive bays. I hot swapped the drives and dmesg pulls up the drive no problem.

Understood this is not the best test, but didn't want to go much further without being sure first.

If I where to set-up RAID Z2 with four 3 TB drives, would I be able to hot swap the drives?
Has any one experienced problems with hot swapping drives with FreeNAS?
Has any one experienced success?

Thank-you in advanced

 

[cyberjock]

Hotswap is supported if the hardware and driver supports it. That's the big question. Some hardwar and drivers claim to support it, but really don't. Additionally, FreeNAS wasn't designed with the expectation that you'll be swapping drives in and out regularly. If that's your plan you're going to have alot of work to do because you're going to be constantly export and importing pools which probably isn't the best thing in the world to do.

I do not trust hotswap at all ever regardless of if the hardware supports it or not. Had problems with some test setups and it doesn't always work, so why take the chance.

 

[Johnathan Knight]

Thanks for your reply cyberjock,

I know the hardware manufacturer states that they support hot swap. No idea about the drivers though. The main concern for hot swap is that I need a backup solution where a weekly backup is performed on Drive A. When Drive backup is complete swap out with replacement Drive B. Send Drive A to the bank for a week. then do it all over again by the end of next week.