Drobo like features from freenas?

[l33t]

I've looked at drobos and they are nice, but they are slow, they aren't based on the ZFS file system and they are just plain expensive.

The two main features I like from it though are the auto resizing and rebuilding of the array when you pop a new drive in or pop out an old drive and pop in a new drive. The second is you can use different size drives.

I want to know if I can do the same with freenas wither out of the box or more likely with the help of some 3rd part plugins. I want to be able to use different size drives without it treating all the drives as if it were the same size and the smallest one. I also want to automate resizing and rebuilding the array. I can just picture me being away on business and a drive goes bad or space is low. My wife can handle replacing a drive or adding a new drive, but in all honestly (don;t tell her i said this) but I don't think she could handle manually configuring it. So I want that automated again just like a drobo.

Are these two things possible? Any guidance on how to accomplish this?

 

[survive]

Hi l33t,

No, you can't.

If you want the flexibility to do all the funky different-drive-size stuff you get with a Drobo, you compromise on performance. There's not really (not any) way to get what you are looking for out of ZFS.

-Will

 

[l33t]

Thats unfortunate I cannot mix and match different drive sizes. Would it be possible to combine several smaller drives into one virtual disc using jbod to get around this limitation? If so it would be nice to see the freenas software do this itself on the fly in future releases.

How about the auto rebuild and resizing? Or how difficult is it to do manually? he big one will be resizing. I will be starting small and growing, hard to do with a traditional hardware raid, will it be the same with freenas?

 

[fracai]

You can use different sized drives, you'll just also be limited by the size of the smallest drive. I started out with 4x1TB,2x2TB and was limited to an effective 6x1TB until I got the smaller drives replaced with 2TB drives.

Auto rebuild isn't available, but auto resize is the default when the replacement completes.

The key is to start with the number of drives that you want to end up with.

 

[cyberjock]

FreeNAS is the same as traditional hardware RAID. Mixing and matching hard drives limits you based on your vdev type and disk sizes, being limited to the smallest disk in the vdev.

Rebuilding and resizing are fairly simple. Rebuilding a failed disk is in the manual, resizing is explained in the FAQ and the forums with some searching. For many people that haven't played with settings they shouldn't have, it will simply be a matter of a reboot.