Error/Unable to extend existing pool?

[Art]

I am trying to extend my existing pool but get this warning/error.

WARNING: Adding data vdevs with different numbers of disks is not recommended. First vdev has 8 disks, new vdev has 6.
You are trying to add a virtual device consisting of 6 device(s) in a pool that has a virtual device consisting of 8 device(s)

FreeNAS 11.2

Existing Pool:
vdev-0 - 8 disks RAIDZ2

New vdev-1 - 6 disks RAIDZ2

When I click "Extend" to create/add the new vdev it always prints the latter error and does not create. I thought you can add different vdevs of different device count (even though not recommended).

Any ideas why I am unable to add this new vdev with different number of devices?

Thanks,

Art

 

[danb35]

When I click "Extend" to create/add the new vdev it always prints the latter error and does not create. I thought you can add different vdevs of different device count (even though not recommended).

ZFS will definitely allow it, even though (as you note) it isn't recommended. In the old GUI you needed to go into "manual setup" to do something like this--I'm not quite sure what the comparable button would be in the new GUI.

 

[Chris Moore]

Any ideas why I am unable to add this new vdev with different number of devices?

It might be a feature of the new UI, that there's no way to force it. The quick solution might be to login to the legacy UI, but you might want to open a ticket for this to see if the development team needs to add a check box to confirm the action even though it goes against the best practices.

 

[danb35]

It might be a feature of the new UI, that there's no way to force it.

That really would be a horribly broken mis-feature.

 

[Chris Moore]

That really would be a horribly broken mis-feature.

Well, some people call undocumented features by another name. It may be worth a bug report / feature request.

 

[Art]

Thanks for the help. I went the legacy UI route and did the manual setup.

For reference here are the popups in the new UI I received.

So I would assume the 2nd popup would be the confirmation to force the new vdev creation.

Cheers!

 

[danb35]

So I would assume the 2nd popup would be the confirmation to force the new vdev creation.

Yes, I'd think so. If it doesn't work that way, I'd agree with @Chris Moore that a bug report would be warranted.

 

[Chris Moore]

Thanks for the help. I went the legacy UI route and did the manual setup.

For reference here are the popups in the new UI I received.

View attachment 28841
View attachment 28842
View attachment 28843

So I would assume the 2nd popup would be the confirmation to force the new vdev creation.

Cheers!

You weren't able to get the pool created in the new UI ?
Did you create a bug report?

 

[Art]

FYI -- Here is the bug report: https://redmine.ixsystems.com/issues/77826

 

[avilevy]

ZFS will definitely allow it, even though (as you note) it isn't recommended. In the old GUI you needed to go into "manual setup" to do something like this--I'm not quite sure what the comparable button would be in the new GUI.

Hi
I'm try to extend the pool in the "manual setup" but there is a RED worrning "existing data will be cleard". My question is the data on the new device will be cleard or the All pool data will be cleard?

 

[avilevy]

Hi
I'm try to extend the pool in the "manual setup" but there is a RED worrning "existing data will be cleard". My question is the data on the new device will be cleard or the All pool data will be cleard?

I found the this on doc "The Add Volume button warns that existing data will be cleared. In other words, creating a new volume reformats the selected disks. " It's answer my question

 

[Sawtaytoes]

I just tried to add a brand new pool on the latest release of TrueNAS SCALE and had the same issue:

I can't click "Create".

I went in the browser's devtools and remove the disabled state:

Still a bug? Looks like TrueNAS doesn't want to allow this configuration even though it should be valid for ZFS.

 

[Arwen]

Did you check the check boxes?

Next, their is likely an Advanced option somewhere that will let you do what you want.


Also note that some of your wording seems less precise. This in particular;

I just tried to add a brand new pool on the latest release of TrueNAS SCALE and had the same issue:

The wording would normally be "I just tried to add a new vDev to my pool...". (A ZFS pool is made up of 1 or more vDevs, aka Virtual Devices.)

But, with the wording you used, it may be interpreted as the disks already are part of a pool and you want to add them to an existing pool. Not possible. Unfortunately ZFS added some new terminology that can be hard to understand at times.

 

[Etorix]

Plus, in this case, striping a raidz1 vdev with an existing raidz2 is a genuine BAD IDEA. That would irreversibly degrade resiliency.

 

[Sawtaytoes]

I created a new pool with some spare drives I had while I'm switching from mirrors to RAID-Z2 or dRAID.

When setting up that pool (for testing), I used 11 drives: 4xRAID-Z2, 4xRAID-Z2, 3xRAID-Z.

Yes, I checked those boxes before proceeding, but it errored as soon as the Python code ran to actually create the pool with mismatched RAID-Zs.