Feature request- adding hard drives, different sized drives

[Tim Lawler]

Hello,
As far as I know, there is no way to add storage to freenas without rebuilding the array? I know drobo just lets you plug in a new drive and it takes it away. Is there any plan to implement this in the future?

Also, I have a very strange mix of hard drives, from 1TB to 3TB, and I'd like to be able to use them all without losing a ton of storage (up to 2TB per disk). I really don't want to have to buy HDDs specifically for NAS. Again, I know drobo supports this feature. Is there any plan to implement this?

If so, are there any timelines in place?
I set up a freenas box at work, and I am very happy with it. However, I don't have anywhere near the budget at home, so I'd like to get these features to make freenas a lot more friendly to me here. I'd like to build or buy a nasbox in the next 6 months. Any chance of these features making it before then?
Thank you!

 

[Tomas Liumparas]

I do not know about the Drobo, but it's just how ZFS works. There are at least two ways to add storage to FreeNAS.
Take a look at this

 

[cyberjock]

This request is not likely to change anytime soon. Its how ZFS works, it was a known limitation when ZFS was being designed, and it was accepted for what it is because ZFS was/is an enterprise class storage solution. Enterprises do NOT do single disk adds. So nobody really cares about that limitation and nobody is in a hurry to even consider changing it. Just trying to add this feature would break ZFS in so many ways you'd be better off reinventing ZFS from the ground up. Considering the cost to invent ZFS, there's zero chance you'll see iXsystems design it.

 

[david kennedy]

Hello,
As far as I know, there is no way to add storage to freenas without rebuilding the array? I know drobo just lets you plug in a new drive and it takes it away. Is there any plan to implement this in the future?

Also, I have a very strange mix of hard drives, from 1TB to 3TB, and I'd like to be able to use them all without losing a ton of storage (up to 2TB per disk). I really don't want to have to buy HDDs specifically for NAS. Again, I know drobo supports this feature. Is there any plan to implement this?

If so, are there any timelines in place?
I set up a freenas box at work, and I am very happy with it. However, I don't have anywhere near the budget at home, so I'd like to get these features to make freenas a lot more friendly to me here. I'd like to build or buy a nasbox in the next 6 months. Any chance of these features making it before then?
Thank you!

If this is a major requirement for you then perhaps ZFS is not the best soloution?

There are many alternatives which allow odd sized disks (normally non-standard raid systems), or reshaping an existing array to allow a single disk to be added (normally a time consuming event).

As cyberjock pointed out, ZFS was meant for enterprise storage systems and it is extremely unlikely they would ever consider reshaping an array. They would most likely just add a new VDEV using drives of the same capacity as what they currently have in the pool.

 

[Tim Lawler]

What solution would you recommend, then? I'd rather use all my own hardware, so I wouldn't want to do DROBO unless I had to. If I have to pay for the OS, I guess that is OK, although I'd obviously prefer open source. If Freenas isn't my best bet, what would you recommend?

thank you for the responses!

 

[cyberjock]

What solution would you recommend, then? I'd rather use all my own hardware, so I wouldn't want to do DROBO unless I had to. If I have to pay for the OS, I guess that is OK, although I'd obviously prefer open source. If Freenas isn't my best bet, what would you recommend?

thank you for the responses!

Whatever you feel comfortable with. The freedom to choose gives you the ability to do whatever you want. :)

 

[Cupcake]

It's like requesting a tricycle with only two wheels. That does already exist, it's called bicycle and it's less stable ;)
Before you decide, have a final look at ZFS and what makes it stand out (wikipedia for instance).

 

[fracai]

I feel like a bicycle would be more stable than a tricycle at high speeds. I feel like this analogy fits for FreeNAS and Drobo as well.

 

[jyb3]

Tim, I am not sure if you have enough drives to fill all available slots in your chassis, but if you do, I see no reason why you can't build your ZFS based FreeNAS box to act like a Drobo. It is pretty much what I do with 4 drives RAIDz1 configuration. Just know if you build a 4 drive array, you cannot take that to a 5 drive array without out destroying the 4 drive pool and creating a 5 drive pool from scratch.

I too had Drobo in mind, but I just wanted to salvage parts, and I have grown my array in size. I started out with an old Optiplex GX280 with 2xPATA and 2xSATA moving to a Optiplex 620 with 4xSATA drive, and finally an Optiplex 960 with 4xSATA drives.

Along this path I tried to monkey around with partitioning schemes to try and maximize my space without killing redundancy. Nowadays, I just put 4 drives in one VDEV in one ZPOOL, and let ZFS figure out what it can create.

This test started out with 40G, 300G, and 2x500G drives (ZFS usable space 495G). This was a test to take the 40G right out and replace with another 500G (300G and 3x500G) for total space of 733G. Then I swapped the 300G for 1TB (1TB and 3x500G) for 900G of usable space. Next 2x500G and 2x1TB gave me 1.5T. Soon the 500GB will be replace with 1TB. But you get the idea.

I am just swapping out with larger drives as they become available so my pool size is growing over time. Is this in a nutshell what you are wanting to do?

Also, you can play around with these things in VMware or VirtualBox, by creating a 4GB FreeNAS drive and add a bunch of random size small virtual drives (like 2x512MB and 2x1GB) and watch how FreeNAS handles them. You can simulate what it will be like when you want to replace a drive, and since you won't have to wait hours for the resilver you can get a pretty good idea of what your setup will be like.

Best of luck...

 

[gpsguy]

Those disk sizes are too small, I'd make them at least 4Gb+. If using the webgui (highly recommended), FreeNAS will reserve 2Gb for the swap file.

... I see no reason why creating a 4GB FreeNAS drive and add a bunch of random size small virtual drives (like 2x512MB and 2x1GB) and watch how FreeNAS handles them.

Yes, it's nice to be able to test FreeNAS in a virtual environment.

 

[jyb3]

Those disk sizes are too small, I'd make them at least 4Gb+. If using the webgui (highly recommended), FreeNAS will reserve 2Gb for the swap file.

Good point. I disabled the swap creation on the drives in the GUI. I also like to play around in command line, and when I am manually partitioning the drive, I don't create swap partitions either. But this is just for playing around and for me, watching the pool grow.

 

[cyberjock]

And you need to create partitions from the CLI when you SHOULD be using the GUI because?

 

[cyberjock]

Cause I will tell you that circumventing the GUI can lead to major problems. In short, you shouldn't be going to the CLI for anything that you can do from the WebGUI. Choosing to ignore this basic concept can create problems for you later unless you are a FreeBSD expert and can solve your own self-created problems.

 

[jyb3]

And you need to create partitions from the CLI when you SHOULD be using the GUI because?

...CLI Education!

 

[tio]

What solution would you recommend, then? I'd rather use all my own hardware, so I wouldn't want to do DROBO unless I had to. If I have to pay for the OS, I guess that is OK, although I'd obviously prefer open source. If Freenas isn't my best bet, what would you recommend?

thank you for the responses!

Use Unraid

 

[untg]

You could try Amahi I think the drive pooling technology is called 'Grey Hole', apart from the really unfortunate name I think it just uses Samba + smarts to gives you variable drive pooling. IMHO you are taking a bit of a risk if you use anything other than ZFS these days, you are kinda doing this to your data:
http://bit.ly/1edKfxU