Possible configuration?

[Crustacean]

I know an 8 drive configuration isn't optimal, but speed isn't really a factor here. I like saturating 2 nics, but it isn't required.

Anyway, I have 8x1TB drives that id like to use in raid Z2. I backed up my existing (6x1TB) volume, added two 1TB drives i got for free, and created a new volume with all 8 drivers. I expected to be able to have 6 drives usable, with 2 for parity, but i guess that isn't possible? The GUI didn't give me the option. My current configuration appears to be 4 usable drives, 4 for parity. That's a little much in the redundancy department.. Is it possible to get more usable space from my configuration? if not I'm going to have to pop out the two drives i added and find a use for them elsewhere.

I found posts like this elsewhere, and it seemed like others had a 6+2 configuration working. Even 5+3 would work if raidz3 supports that. Thanks in advance :D.

 

[cyberjock]

The GUI absolutely give you options. You didn't exercise those options apparently though.

Read the FreeNAS manual at doc.freenas.org. ;)

 

[Crustacean]

The GUI absolutely give you options. You didn't exercise those options apparently though.

Read the FreeNAS manual at doc.freenas.org. ;)

I must have missed something.. I've read the manual and I've done this multiple times ha.
I selected Raid Z2, and was able to utilize all 8 drives, but i didnt see an option to limit the parity to two disks. Ill run through the manual, try it again, and post my results. Thanks!

 

[cyberjock]

RAIDZ2 is, by definition, 2 disks. There is no such thing as RAIDZ2 with anything other than 2 disks for parity.

 

[Crustacean]

I see. I'm a failure. I don't know how I didn't figure this out yesterday!

A 6+2 configuration won't be dangerous as far as my ability to rebuild after the loss of a disk right? It just results in performance degradation?

Also, in regards to your last post, i thought that was the case. So im not sure what the hell i did yesterday. But it looked like this.
I guess it was two vdevs? I don't know. Anyway thanks again cyberjock, this will be the third time you've helped me out.

 

[cyberjock]

That screenshot is of 2 vdevs that are RAIDZ2. You wanted one vdev that is RAIDZ2 so you have 2 parity disks total.

And an 8-drive RAIDZ2 is quite safe and will work just fine for home use.

 

[Crustacean]

speeds are workable, but no longer even saturate a single gigabit NIC. About 105mb/s.
that's more than half of speed i was seeing before, and more of a hit than i was expecting. I might have to ditch this configuration and just get some bigger drives...

 

[Ericloewe]

speeds are workable, but no longer even saturate a single gigabit NIC. About 105mb/s.
that's more than half of speed i was seeing before, and more of a hit than i was expecting. I might have to ditch this configuration and just get some bigger drives...

Try some large sequential reads/writes. Those should be less affected by the inefficiencies from having a non-power of two amount of drives + parity drives. If that still doesn't saturate GbE, something else is up - most likely a Realtek controller on one or both ends.