Newbie Storage Question, trying to plan ahead

[shaunvis]

I'm planning on trying FreeNas with an old T620. I have 6 2TB drives to use for storage.

What's the best way to plan for drive upgrades in the future? I'm sure I'll fill up the 6 drives at some point and would slowly replace them with bigger drives.

Is there even a way to do that?

I understand the pools & how they work, I'm just not sure about something like this where I'd be starting off with no extra storage slots.

Would I be better off leaving 2 bays empty for now. Then in the future add 2 8TB drives and pull out some of the 2TB & replace those with 8TB. Essentially having 3 pairs of mirrored drives added to the pool.

Thanks for the help

 

[shaunvis]

Forgot to add, am I better off setting up arrays in the PERC and then using the vdisks in FreeNas? Or let FreeNas handle RAID?

 

[Nick2253]

If you want to use FreeNAS, you have to use ZFS. And ZFS works best when it has direct control over the drives. You will likely have to flash the RAID controller to IT mode in order to support direct access.

As to your storage space, only you can really answer your question. You set up with striped mirrors, and you lose 50% of your drive space (6TB usable). Or with RAIDZ2, you get 67% (8TB). If you use striped mirrors, you can add additional mirrors, or replace mirror pairs with larger drives, to add space to your pool. With RAIDZ2, you usually want to add additional RAIDZ2 vdevs, or replace all the drives with larger drives, in order to add space to your pool.

If you go with 8 disks in RAIDZ2, you bump up to 75% of your total space.

 

[shaunvis]

Thanks for the info.

I may not have explained my question well. I understand how I can set up my current drives, thanks.

What I'm not sure about is what happens when my drives are full. I won't be able to add disks, so I'll have to upgrade them.

So in a situation where you can't add disks & you're almost out of space, how would you increase your storage?

 

[jgreco]

You replace drives one at a time with larger drives, allowing each one to resilver fully into the pool. This can take quite some time for all the drives, but when you finish, your array will become bigger.

 

[danb35]

I better off setting up arrays in the PERC and then using the vdisks in FreeNas?

NO!

 

[shaunvis]

You replace drives one at a time with larger drives, allowing each one to resilver fully into the pool. This can take quite some time for all the drives, but when you finish, your array will become bigger.

Gotcha. So if I wanted to swap my 2TB with say 8TB, by the time I'm done the pool size will automatically increase? Cool.

I'm switching from a Synology and used to how that works. But I think I get it now.

Also I'm reading that I should probably ditch the H710 controller in my T620 & get something else, like an H310.

Thanks for the help people

 

[jgreco]

Gotcha. So if I wanted to swap my 2TB with say 8TB, by the time I'm done the pool size will automatically increase? Cool.

I'm switching from a Synology and used to how that works. But I think I get it now.

Also I'm reading that I should probably ditch the H710 controller in my T620 & get something else, like an H310.

Thanks for the help people

You can make sure by verifying that the pool is set to autoexpand:

% zpool get autoexpand

 

[CraigD]

What is your use case? Storage? VMs? Streaming media?

How may drives will fit in your case? (If it will hold 8 buy 2 more drives)

Do you want 1, 2, or 3 "parity"?

How much data will you expect to store now? in 3 years?

Them we can help you plan ahead

Have Fun
EDIT: Watch this: https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...pool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/#post-31234

 

[shaunvis]

I have about 9TB on my 7 year old Synology now I plan on moving over. I'd probably add half that more in 3 years (12TB). Since I'm looking at replacing my Synology, I figured I'd try this out first.

I have 8 drive slots in the T620 I'm planning on using. I was going to use 2 for the OS but after thinking about it, it would probably be better to pull the CD drive, put an SSD there and use that for the OS and then use all 8 slots for data drives.

On hand, I have 6 2TB drives I'm not using. I'm fine with 1 drive for a spare, it's what I've always had. Then again, this is a good time to make the switch to 2 drive tolerance.

So.... I'm thinking use my 6 2TB drives and buy 2 8TB drives. Use all 8 drives, with Z2. Then gradually swap out the 2TB drives with 8TB drives over the next year or two. Is that a sound plan? Any issues I'm not seeing?

And thanks for the link, I'll read through that too

 

[Nick2253]

So.... I'm thinking use my 6 2TB drives and buy 2 8TB drives. Use all 8 drives, with Z2. Then gradually swap out the 2TB drives with 8TB drives over the next year or two. Is that a sound plan? Any issues I'm not seeing?

As long as your have a controller than can handle 8TB drives, that sounds like a plan. The big thing is that you will not realize the space gains from the 8TB drives until all the drives are 8TB. In other words, for every 8TB drive you put in that vdev, you're wasting 6TB, until you make them all 8TB, then you realize all of that space.

I think you get this, but just to make sure. Some people go down this road thinking that they can replace just one larger drive and get more space, and it doesn't work that way.

 

[shaunvis]

As long as your have a controller than can handle 8TB drives, that sounds like a plan. The big thing is that you will not realize the space gains from the 8TB drives until all the drives are 8TB. In other words, for every 8TB drive you put in that vdev, you're wasting 6TB, until you make them all 8TB, then you realize all of that space.

I think you get this, but just to make sure. Some people go down this road thinking that they can replace just one larger drive and get more space, and it doesn't work that way.

Yep, I know I won't see extra space until they're all 8TB. But I figure doing it this way by the time I fill up 12TB, I'll have then all upgraded to 8TB.

My server has an H710, which seems to not be good for this so I was going to swap it with an H310 and use IT mode/passthrough/custom FW, whichever is best. As far as I know, that should be fine with 8TB drives.

 

[adrianwi]

How great will that day be? The last 8TB drive resilvers and all of a sudden you go from ~12TB to ~48TB. A glorious day :D

 

[Nick2253]

That will indeed be a glorious day!

 

[HoneyBadger]

My server has an H710, which seems to not be good for this so I was going to swap it with an H310 and use IT mode/passthrough/custom FW, whichever is best.

You'll want to flash it with the LSI SAS2008 IT mode firmware; the stock Dell firmware on the H310 has incredibly poor performance due to a low adapter queue depth.

 

[jgreco]

Other option is H200, which has connectors in approximately the same location as the H710. This is important if you're upgrading an R510 or something where the card is "integrated" in the internal PCIe slot, and the custom SAS cables won't reach farther.

 

[shaunvis]

How great will that day be? The last 8TB drive resilvers and all of a sudden you go from ~12TB to ~48TB. A glorious day :D

I'll time it for next Christmas

 

[shaunvis]

You'll want to flash it with the LSI SAS2008 IT mode firmware; the stock Dell firmware on the H310 has incredibly poor performance due to a low adapter queue depth.

Cool, thanks!

 

[shaunvis]

Well this is getting to be a chore, lol.

I ordered an already flashed H310 card. While waiting, I installed Freenas on a disk with the H710 just to play with it. All went well.

I got the H310, pulled out the H710, an for the life of me can't get it to install on one of the 2 on board SATA ports. I tried swapping the disk with the CD drive port, tried 3 SSDs (all get CRC errors, I think this Dell OEM Samsung drive is not compatible).

Then I tried two different hard drives connected to the onboard SATA ports, and I can install Freenas. But when install completes and you reboot, I get an error about "No ZFS Pool loaded".

I'm still playing with it, but it seems like no matter what I do, I can't get Freenas to install on any drive on the Dell T620 onboard SATA (in AHCI mode).

Anyone see anything like this?

 

[shaunvis]

Odd, but it seemed to let me install onto a USB flash drive just fine.

I've seen some people say to do that, some say no. Is there any reason not to run it that way?