Replacing My 4TB's with 10tb's (Can you mix models?)

[Christopher Ward]

I just recently finished upgrading my Raid-Z2 Dataset from 10x 3TB WD RED Drives to 10x 4TB WD Red Drives which took over a year and i'm a little disappointed that it only shows as 26.7TB total space (5TB left to use of that which will easily get used up with all my media consumption and computer back ups) so i've been looking at upgrading my storage again and an opportunity has risen for more storage than i could ever see myself needing.

I have special codes for the WD online store that stack and allow me to buy 20TB My book duo's for £335 (£559 RRP). The Duos come with 2x 10TB WD Red Drives so i'm effectively getting each drive for £167. These drives are currently selling for over £300 on amazon for a single drive.

I don't plan on buying 5 of these duo's at the moment (would be nice if i had the cash) but if i buy one or two now and down the line and they change the model number of the drives inside the duo's or i eventually just buy some wd red 10tb's individually to expand my current Raid-Z2 can you mix model numbers of drives inside the dataset?

I also only have 16GB of ECC RAM for my server at the moment and i haven't noticed any issues, should i? my motherboard only supports 32GB RAM so i can upgrade the RAM as well but i haven't had any issues yet with 16GB?

 

[Chris Moore]

Replacing My 4TB's with 10tb's (Can you mix models?)

Yes, you can mix models.
You might be better suited by building a new pool that is broken into two vdevs instead of having all the drives in a single vdev. Several years ago, I had a single pool with a single vdev of 12 drives in RAIDz3 and I built a new server with a single pool of 12 drives split into two vdevs at RAIDz2. Having two vdevs gave me more IOPS and better performance overall, plus I was later able to expand the pool by replacing just six drives instead of needing to replace all 12 drives to get the pool to grow. Just a though.

I have special codes for the WD online store that stack and allow me to buy 20TB My book duo's for £335 (£559 RRP). The Duos come with 2x 10TB WD Red Drives so i'm effectively getting each drive for £167. These drives are currently selling for over £300 on amazon for a single drive.

That sounds like a good value.

I don't plan on buying 5 of these duo's at the moment (would be nice if i had the cash) but if i buy one or two now and down the line and they change the model number of the drives inside the duo's or i eventually just buy some wd red 10tb's individually to expand my current Raid-Z2 can you mix model numbers of drives inside the dataset?

Just remember that the performance of a vdev is dictated by the performance of the slowest drive, but you shouldn't see a problem with mixing models.

I also only have 16GB of ECC RAM for my server at the moment and i haven't noticed any issues, should i? my motherboard only supports 32GB RAM so i can upgrade the RAM as well but i haven't had any issues yet with 16GB?

It might provide you some additional performance if you upgrade RAM, but not required. ZFS uses RAM for the ARC (Adaptive Replacement Cache) and that extra memory would allow more things to be held in cache. That might make it feel more responsive. Personal preference.

 

[Christopher Ward]

Thanks for the help. I was actually looking at upgrading a few components as well as my case as well so i could possibly split them into two vdevs.

If i was to rebuild a new server with a new case and ram would i need to keep track of what hard drive plugs into what sata port on the motherboard or can i just connect them to any slot without risk of data loss?

 

[CraigD]

Add a JBOD or switch cases if you need to, then add a vdev using the 3TB drives to your pool

Have Fun

 

[Chris Moore]

If i was to rebuild a new server with a new case and ram would i need to keep track of what hard drive plugs into what sata port on the motherboard or can i just connect them to any slot without risk of data loss?

Looks like you are in the UK, so you probably have fewer options than we do here in the USA. I used a couple of rack chassis like this for builds:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3U-Supermicro-H8DME-2-2x-AMD-2218-2-6Ghz-Storage-Server/232863971132
Once I received them, I pulled the old (virtually useless) system board out and mounted my own. Cable the hot-swap backplane to an appropriate controller card and you are set for up to 16 drives.
The shipping cost may make this less attractive for you. It was a good deal for me. I got the system and shipping for around $300 and that is a very good price for hot-swap drive bays. Not too bad a price for any chassis that also includes quality redundant power supplies. The supplies that Supermicro uses are "global", so all you need is the correct power cord to go from the back of the supply to the output connector on your UPS.

 

[Chris Moore]

can i just connect them to any slot without risk of data loss?

PS. I forgot to say. FreeNAS just needs a valid data path to the drive. It doesn't care how it is connected. A drive that works on SATA will also work on a SAS interface but the reverse is not true. The way FreeNAS is configured, the ZFS configuration of the drives is based on the gptid of the partition, so that is what is important.

 

[Christopher Ward]

PS. I forgot to say. FreeNAS just needs a valid data path to the drive. It doesn't care how it is connected. A drive that works on SATA will also work on a SAS interface but the reverse is not true. The way FreeNAS is configured, the ZFS configuration of the drives is based on the gptid of the partition, so that is what is important.

Thanks i did have a norco RPC4020 case but it was in my bedroom and looked out of place and dust was a huge problem so i swapped it out for a more sleek looking define R5, i think i might upgrade to a define R6 for the window feature and the HDD layout inside the case.

I think i'm going to go ahead and order a few duos and get started on my plans on upgrading from 10x 4tbs to 10x 10tb. I'm just not sure on the ram situation as a lot of places say for every 1tb of storage, you should have 1gb of ram and if i have a 100tb server my motherboard doesn't even support any more than 32gb of ram never mind what would probably have to be 128gb of ram?

It's mainly for plex consumption.

 

[CraigD]

More RAM is better

For PLEX and bulk storage I think you will be fine with 32 GB of RAM

I have a large pool, it will take years for me to full it up, I am slowly saving money, if and when I need to upgrade the RAM I will, but no point in wasting money on a new platform before then

Have Fun

 

[Chris Moore]

About the RAM issue, this has been discussed many times, someone should write a resource... Until then, I will give you the condensed version.
FreeNAS, uses the ZFS file system and the ZFS file system uses RAM for something called ARC (Adaptive Replacement Cache) and FreeNAS lets ZFS use as much RAM as possible in an effort to accelerate file operations, because if it can come from RAM instead of from disk, it is very fast. The more RAM you have, the more things can be in the cache and performance is improved. For FreeNAS to work properly, it needs a minimum of 8GB of RAM but above that, it is mostly about improving performance, particularly directory listings. If you have enough RAM, you metadata for directory listings will be in memory and changing to a different directory on you NAS will be very fast. Not having enough RAM will cause the NAS to need to index the disks to pull a directory listing and it could be quite slow. So, it is down to your need for speed. If you want to make your NAS faster, break the pool into two vdevs instead of one so you can double the IOPS and add as much RAM as you can get. Not having enough RAM will only impact speed and you can always upgrade the system board to allow you to add more RAM.

 

[Christopher Ward]

Decided to go for the NODE 804 and sold the DEFINE R5

PSA: DON'T BUY A NODE 804 IF YOU WANT TO MOUNT NEWER STYLE HARD DRIVES TO THE FRONT SIDE OF THE CASE AS THE 10TB RED'S HAVE DIFFERENT SCREW MOUNTS COMPARED TO THE 4TB

i can only mount my 10tb's in the front with 2 screws and the the drive rocks side to side...Not sure what to do

 

[Chris Moore]

PSA: DON'T BUY A NODE 804 IF YOU WANT TO MOUNT NEWER STYLE HARD DRIVES TO THE FRONT SIDE OF THE CASE AS THE 10TB RED'S HAVE DIFFERENT SCREW MOUNTS COMPARED TO THE 4TB

How old is this case because this is an issue that we first saw a couple years ago and I would have expected them to modify the design of the bracket by now.

 

[Apollo]

For Plex usage, RAM is not going to be really usefull as the ARC will be flushed frequently if you tend to watch completely different movies.
ARC will promote performance only if the files are being access over and over and such files not being flush once RAM availability runs out.
32GB of RAM would help, only if you use the same files over, otherwise it shouldn't really matter.
I am currently running my backup replication system with 16GB with 3 pool containing about 13-15TB each. No problems there. I do not use it to access files but I have been doing replication and snapshot verification with it. With such low RAM usage, you will most likely get recurring Netdata warnings about RAM exhaustion. Nothing to be worried about.

 

[Christopher Ward]

How old is this case because this is an issue that we first saw a couple years ago and I would have expected them to modify the design of the bracket by now.

Looks like it was released mid 2014, slightly disappointing

 

[Stevie_1der]

How old is this case because this is an issue that we first saw a couple years ago and I would have expected them to modify the design of the bracket by now.

They did address the problem with a Hard Drive Adapter HDD >6TB - White
I thought it was for fitting and fixing drives in the vertical hanging cages only.
But if you look at the third and fourth drawing on the product page, it seems (but I don't know for sure) this adapter would also fit for the bottom mounting holes of the HDD.
And there are also upgraded drive trays for the Define chassis available.
So they didn't change the chassis design itself, but at least made the necessary accessories instead.

 

[file_haver]

How old is this case because this is an issue that we first saw a couple years ago and I would have expected them to modify the design of the bracket by now.

Fractal is notorious for re-releasing the same designs with only minor changes... the latest meshify case is no different than a 5? year old case functionally.

That said I wish more people would listen to me when I saw the Antec 302 can't be beat for the price or function in a NAS situation! (Cant speak to availability outside north america of this case though.)

Anyway OP I am mixing and matching models of hard drives and it works fine here - i can't say whether or not you can change the number of drives in a vdev but i believe you can replace the disks in a pool one by one and when you replace the last small capacity drive FreeNAS automatically extends the size of the pool. I upgraded all 3tb to all 5tb that way.

 

[Christopher Ward]

I contacted fractal and they confirmed the Hard Drive Adapters will work for the bottom of the drives and they're sending some out free of charge.

 

[Christopher Ward]

i can confirm the hard drive adapter work perfectly on the bottom of the drives to allow 10TB drives to be mounted in the front chamber :)