Expanding Pool to new disks

[BlazeStar]

Hello,

Using TrueNAS-13.0-U6.1

I have a RAIDZ2 pool with 5 X 4TB disks.

And I have 3 X 4TB disks that are available.

I want to expand my RAIDZ2 pool to use the 3 X 4TB extra disks.

I searched the documentation but found it unclear.

Also using the "Expand Pool" doesn't do anything.

Please help!

 

[danb35]

I want to expand my RAIDZ2 pool to use the 3 X 4TB extra disks.

That isn't possible.

 

[Arwen]

In case others read this now or later, the ZFS RAID-Zx vDev expansion feature is not yet available in TrueNAS, (SCALE or Core). And will likely not be available, officially, in the GUI until 2025 at the earliest.

"Expand Pool" is something else related to swapping disks in a vDev with larger disks.

 

[BlazeStar]

So how can I use my three extra disks?

I need to create another pool?

Isn't there a way to expand the pool with command line?

Thanks!

 

[Etorix]

You can extend your pool with a new vdev, but you'd ideally need five drives (not necessarily 4 TB) for that, to remain consistent with the first vdev. Adding a 3-wide raidz1 vdev is possible… but would downgrade the whole pool to the resiliency and to the performance of the least capable vdev, and there would be no way out this imbalanced configuration—save for destroying the whole pool to rebuild.

 

[Arwen]

So how can I use my three extra disks?

I need to create another pool?

Isn't there a way to expand the pool with command line?

Thanks!

Unfortunately ZFS was not designed for expanding a RAID-Zx vDev by 1 or more disks. The origins of ZFS were for the Enterprise Data Center where Solaris SysAdmins would add another similarly sized RAID-Zx vDev. Or take an outage and reconfigure.

ZFS, (and by extension, TrueNAS, Core or SCALE), are not the end all of open source NAS software. ZFS does have some limitations, that can bite people. When a new user proposes a TrueNAS configuration, we here in the forums try and get them educated in both best practices, and some of the limitations. But, nothing is perfect.

Again, not all this is for the original poster. Others reading this now or later may find my comments useful.