FreeNAS Upgrade

[Paranoiak]

Hi everyone.

I have already asked this in the french forum but I prefer to be sure and ask this here too ! :)

Here is my translated message (DeepL is quite effective ! Try it !)



I was studying an upgrade for my current FreeNAS (the config is in my signature)

I use it mainly to store my movies, photos, ISOs. I am the only one using it via CIFS (Windows machines)

So I currently have 6 x 3 TB in RAID-Z2, about 12 TB usable.

Instead of buying it all back, I'd just like to change all my hard drives for more capacity. The problem is the overall RAM of the system, I have 16 GB MAX (I am already in ECC) with this motherboard.

Do you find such upgrades dangerous?

6 x 4 TB RAID-Z2 = 16 TB usable | 24 TB RAW
6 x 6 TB RAID-Z2 = 24 TB usable | 36 TB RAW
6 x 8 TB RAID-Z2 = 32 TB usable | 48 TB RAW

There is the 1 GB by 1 TB RAW rule for RAM, that's where I wonder. I would opt for the last solution, 2.66 times more space.

How do you feel about that? In addition, have you ever done such an upgrade (break the disks one by one to expand the ZFS volume) ?

Thank you for your input.

 

[Jailer]

You should be fine upgrading the disks with 16GB.

 

[Paranoiak]

Thanks for your reply !

And what about the upgrade process ? Is it safe ?

 

[Paranoiak]

"If you do not have a spare drive port, you will need to replace one drive with a larger drive using the instructions in Replacing a Failed Drive. This process is slow and places the system in a degraded state. Since a failure at this point could be disastrous, do not attempt this method unless the system has a reliable backup. Replace one drive at a time and wait for the resilver process to complete on the replaced drive before replacing the next drive. Once all the drives are replaced and the resilver completes, you should see the added space in the pool."

I could lose 2 drives so I think it is not "too" dangerous...

 

[Chris Moore]

I could lose 2 drives so I think it is not "too" dangerous...

I have, moved from 1TB drives to 2TB drives and again from 2TB to 4TB drives and it works easily. You can replace a drive each day and be done in a week. The size you can upgrade to depends on the kind of controller they are attached to, but you should be perfectly fine upgrading to the largest size you suggested. The 1GB of memory to 1TB of storage rule is for memory less than 16GB. Once you have 16GB of RAM, you are usually fine unless you need high performance. The RAM is used as ARC by the operating system and having more just makes the system more responsive.

 

[Paranoiak]

Thank you very much !

Finally I will upgrade with the 6 TB drives, I will gain twice my actual storage capacity. Enough for my wallet... ^^

 

[Paranoiak]

Finally my ZFS pool is upgraded !

One disk at a time, 6 days ! :)