Growing NAS - replace mirror with Raidz2

[Richard Durso]

Running FreeNAS 9.2.1.3 on a Supermicro MB (MBD-X10SLM-F-O R) with Intel Core i3-4130 Dual Core 2.9Ghz with 32GB DDR3 1600 Mhz ECC RAM.

Currently have 2x4TB WD RED NAS drives based mirror. I'm running out of space with about 18% free. Just got 2 more 4TB WD RED NAS drives.

The end-state I'm looking to reach is 4x4TB RAIDz2. I think that is better solution than a second mirror. I'd like to keep my users, home drives & permissions, jails and services config in tact and not have to do all that work again. Keeping all my snapshots would be a big plus but not critical.

I know I cannot do an in-place / upgrade / conversion. My plan is to:

1) Backup my configuration.
2) Stop all services.
3) Scrub the volume.
4) Backup to external USB drive and/or a Linux desktop via rsync. I'm not confident of the proper switches for rsync to be sure the proper meta data is backed up too.

Then I'm not sure... Google has not been my friend on this.

Looking for your assistance on completing my plan. Figure its better to ask up front and not guess and have to explain something stupid I did.

 

[Yatti420]

I would backup the pool / config and then just wipe.. Work the new drives and create a new pool if everything passes.. Check idle timer using wdidle etc..

 

[Richard Durso]

Thanks. I've completed these steps so far:

• Made backup of FreeNas configuration.
• Formatted external USB drive on NAS for UFS. Mounted as "/mnt/usbdrive".
• Then backed up all data using:

Code:

# cd /mnt/main
# rsync -az -H --progress /mnt/main /mnt/usbdrive

At only about 25MB/sec took most of the weekend to complete.

My wdidle should be set at 300 based on my notes. I'll check again when I set the values on the new drives. My current counters are:

Drive1:
Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 30
Power_On_Hours 0x0032 097 097 000 Old_age Always - 2624
Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 21
Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 199 199 000 Old_age Always - 5425

Drive2:
Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 25
Power_On_Hours 0x0032 097 097 000 Old_age Always - 2624
Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 16
Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 199 199 000 Old_age Always - 5886

I'll make another backup of the most important parts so I have at least 2 maybe 3 copies.

So it sounds like after I destroy the current mirror, add the 2 additional drives, I'll create the RAIDz2 using the 4 drives. Use rsync to put the data back. I'm I done at that point? All the shares / snapshots / configuration / jails will be back to normal? I assume I don't have to actually run a restore config, it was just preventative.

Afterwards, I'll enable SMART tests on the new drives. Anything else I should be thinking of?

 

[Ericloewe]

The Load Cycle Counts look ok, since the drives are rated for 200k (250k?) Load/Unload cycles. A bit higher than I'd expect for 300s idle, but nothing to worry about.

 

[Richard Durso]

I finally tossed in my 2 new drives. And ran "widle3.exe /R" to report current setting and all four show 300 seconds. Didn't know WD Red NAS drives ship with 300 as the default now.

 

[Richard Durso]

I would backup the pool / config and then just wipe.. Work the new drives and create a new pool if everything passes.. Check idle timer using wdidle etc..

After creating the new RAIDz2 volume, I did a small subset restore using rsync to put some files back. Worked fine, but noticed the associated dataset did not show up in the GUI. So from the GUI I created a new dataset using the existing path name. That effectively erased the directory structure. That expected?

If I create the dataset first, then restore, works as expected.

 

[cyberjock]

It didn't erase the directory structure. If you had deleted the dataset your files would magically reappear. The problem is that if a file or folder has the same name as a Dataset then the Dataset name hides the file/folder from being accessible to the end user. This is expected and is documented in the manual(as of 1 minute ago).