Get around Mixing disks of different sizes in a VDEV is not allowed.

[KenwoodFox]

While I'm waiting to fillup my storage shelf with more drives to expand my archive pool I've been putting the drives I've not yet used in and keeping them around as spares, I have 3 vdevs of 500gb drives, and one of my spares was a 3tb, I was expecting to add the 3tb and 5 other 500gb drives into the fourth vdev.
However in vdev2, a drive failed and my spare kicked in, no worries, I was hoping to just make my spare a member of vdev2 but I couldn't figure out how to do it so I just used another drive to replace it.
Now I'm being told by a friend that I cant have drives of different sizes in a vdev, I tried it out quickly and got this error

Code:

Mixing disks of different sizes in a VDEV is not allowed.

But my 3tb drive was able to step in as a spare drive and bring the pool back online, so it is possible to use drives of a bigger size?

Are there workarounds to get around this error?
I also tried replacing a working drive with my 3tb through the GUI and the 3tb did not show up as an available drive even when I removed it from spare.
Thanks for reading.

 

[Scharbag]

Please post some more details about your pool and system in general.

You can mix drives sizes in a vDev. That is no problem. When created, the vDev will treat all drives as the same size as the smallest in the vDev. If the smallest was 1TB, you cannot then use any 500GB drives in there.

I am sure this is an easy issue to resolve with some more information from you.

Cheers,

 

[KenwoodFox]

Thanks for the quick reply~ Let me punch out some more information!

I have 24 slots, with 20 drives populated, 18 drives are 500gb drives of all different makes models and types.
I have 3 vdevs currently, each is made up of 6 drives, the remaining two drives are spares, one is 500gb and the other is 3tb.
I plan on acquiring drives of 750gb and 600gb in the future to finish up the remaining four spaces I need to expand the pool.

My multipath is a little broken, so my disks show up twice, which is useful for now, as I can play around with simulating drives I don't have. If I attempt to expand my pool with 5 500gb drives and 1 3tb drive, I get the above error.

My system consists of a Poweredge 2950 and a NetApp DS4243

 

[Scharbag]

I wonder if this is a 11.3 thing...

I found this post. Perhaps you may need to use the CLI (not GUI)...

 

[KenwoodFox]

Ah.. I just read that train.
You mean use the command line right?
Shoot, i cant downgrade, I've upgraded all my pools :c

 

[blueether]

This is to be changed (in the next Ux update?)

 

[KenwoodFox]

This is to be changed (in the next Ux update?)

Thats really good to hear :) Is there official word on this?

 

[Scharbag]

Ah.. I just read that train.
You mean use the command line right?
Shoot, i can't downgrade, I've upgraded all my pools :c

Yeah, fixed that.

Why TF does the GUI not allow mixing of sizes? Hmm, I would agree with a warning... But this seems heavy handed.

 

[KenwoodFox]

Yeah, fixed that.

Why TF does the GUI not allow mixing of sizes? Hmm, I would agree with a warning... But this seems heavy handed.

I'm so sure i remember that it could be done, darn. I very much hope this is fixed in the next upgrade.

 

[hervon]

Works in CLI. Then import the pool in GUI. Did it lately.

 

[Scharbag]

I'm so sure i remember that it could be done, darn. I very much hope this is fixed in the next upgrade.

For sure you used to be able to do it - I just have not created a pool in a while so it is a surprise that 11.3-U1 does not allow it. Hope this gets fixed very soon.

Cheers,

 

[KenwoodFox]

Do I need to export my pool then import it again?

 

[hervon]

Nope. Create the pool in CLI then import it in GUI. Voilà!

 

[KenwoodFox]

Nope. Create the pool in CLI then import it in GUI. Voilà!

That's absolutely ridiculous, the pool is already created.
So I just have to wait till they fix the gui? :(

 

[hervon]

No. Read carefully.
Create pool in CLI. (the limitation for disk from diffrenent sizes is not in the CLI)
Import it using the GUI.

Works. Did it last week.

 

[KenwoodFox]

I don't understand, are you mixing up pool and vdev?
I cant re-create the pool. I've got terabytes of data on it. I need to expand the pool with a new vdev.

 

[hervon]

Just to be clear, this is my case:
Built a POOL in CLI : mirror of 2 SSDs of different sizes.
Imported it in GUI.
Good luck with your issue. Tried to help.

 

[KenwoodFox]

Alright, thank you, I think I need a different solution for my case. I'll read the man to see if I can use the CLI in place of the gui in my case.