Upgrading Raid card, Drives wont have 2TB limit anymore. What happens?

[clamschlauder]

At work I am taking over our local Freenas box. Currently it has a raid card that is limiting the 3 TB drives to the 2.1 TB or whatever it is. Setup as a RaidZ3 with roughly 13TB of storage space. I plan on getting a couple of the IBM1015 cards for when I start replacing the not so high quality Seagate 3TB drives that someone purchased.

My main concern is how will this affect the pool? Will this react the same way if I replaced all of the hard drives in a pool with larger drives? After the raid card upgrade Freenas will recognize the the extra 1TB per drive?

RAIDZ3, FREENAS 9.3 (not sure exactly what release)
Dont know what the current card is. I can find out any other info if needed.

 

[hugovsky]

If you were using hardware raid, probably you will have to rebuild your pool. Let someone else comment just to be sure.

 

[Ericloewe]

If you were using hardware raid, probably you will have to rebuild your pool. Let someone else comment just to be sure.

Assuming you're properly using LSI SAS1 HBAs (no hardware RAID), this isn't the case.

However, I don't know how ZFS will react to something like this.

@cyberjock any insight into a pool where the drives grow without being replaced?

 

[rogerh]

Assuming you're properly using LSI SAS1 HBAs (no hardware RAID), this isn't the case.

However, I don't know how ZFS will react to something like this.

@cyberjock any insight into a pool where the drives grow without being replaced?

I suppose if nothing bad happens when it boots you could simply replace them through the GUI one by one with themselves. A bit time-consuming.

 

[cyberjock]

@cyberjock any insight into a pool where the drives grow without being replaced?

Nope. No hardware was listed, and the OP says he doesn't know what the card is. So anything we say is just guesswork.

 

[clamschlauder]

I am on staycation this week trying to get stuff done around the house so when I get back to work I will find out what the current hardware setup is. I will report back on Monday with the specifics.

 

[Darren Myers]

find anything out clamschlauder ?

 

[MrRackables]

yes if you are replaceing the RAID card you will need to reconfigure the RAID any questions on that please ask me, thanks

Justin

 

[Darren Myers]

yes if you are replaceing the RAID card you will need to reconfigure the RAID any questions on that please ask me, thanks

Justin

Woah woah, is this the same MrRackables from ebay :P

 

[cyberjock]

Woah woah, is this the same MrRackables from ebay :p

I believe so.

 

[MrRackables]

Yes it's Meee!!!

If you guys have any questions for me, you can contact me here or directly on my ebay thanks,

Happy Hardwaring guys!

 

[clamschlauder]

OK. Board is a SuperMicro X8DA3. The onboard controller is LSI SAS1068E. There are 8 Disks with RAIDZ3 using this controller.

LSI MegaRAID Software RAID BIOS Version: M1068e.08.09041155R

According to this post, seems the drives would be capped either way with the 1068e?

 

[MrRackables]

Yes due to the limitation of the LSI 1068e controller, all drives will be capped at 2.1TB unless you upgrade the RAID card and rebuild the RAID.

regards,
MrRackables.

 

[clamschlauder]

OK. Thats not a huge issue. Luckily the amount of data on the pool is not all that much right now. Thanks for your help.

 

[MrRackables]

No Worries, always like to share whatever knowledge we find out when dealing with hardware.

If you need Raid controllers that can handle upwards to 4TB and or more you know where to find me =)

 

[danb35]

Yes due to the limitation of the LSI 1068e controller, all drives will be capped at 2.1TB unless you upgrade the RAID card and rebuild the RAID.

Do you know that this is the case with ZFS and software RAID? Because your first response in this thread makes it sound like you're talking about hardware RAID, which isn't involved here.

 

[Ericloewe]

Do you know that this is the case with ZFS and software RAID? Because your first response in this thread makes it sound like you're talking about hardware RAID, which isn't involved here.

It's a hardware limitation. A very stupid one, but it's quite absolute.

Edit: I mean the 2TB limit.
Rebuilds should not be required or even possible when used as HBAs.

 

[rogerh]

It's a hardware limitation. A very stupid one, but it's quite absolute.

I don't think the question was about the 2TB limitation, but about what would happen if the whole disks were suddenly revealed to ZFS by putting in a new HBA. I think someone should try it, as long as their data is replaceable.

 

[Ericloewe]

I don't think the question was about the 2TB limitation, but about what would happen if the whole disks were suddenly revealed to ZFS by putting in a new HBA. I think someone should try it, as long as their data is replaceable.

D'oh, missed the bold. Fixed.

 

[rogerh]

D'oh, missed the bold. Fixed.

Do you reckon that auto-expand will kick in, in these circumstances?