Yes, if you created snapshots of your file systems and stored them
remotely, you could receive them into the new pool.

I recommend that you test this process a few times before attempting
the transition.

Thanks,

Cindy

On 07/14/10 16:21, Daniel Taylor wrote:
Sorry I think I used the wrong terms there, still learning, I think what I meant was send/receive rather than import/export.

Would it be possible to use "zfs send" to backup the data somewhere (I'll work that bit out later), then "receive" it into the new pool?

And if I did that would I keep the snapshots?

This system is going to be our backup storage NAS, so losing the snapshots is actually worse than losing the extra 2TB.

Thanks,

- Daniel

On 14 Jul 2010, at 23:06, Cindy Swearingen wrote:

You can't transition a mirrored pool to a RAIDZ pool with an
pool export/import. If you find any info that says you can,
please send a pointer.

You would need to do these important middle steps:

If you transition from a mirrored configuration to a RAIDZ
configuration, you would need to backup the data, destroy
the pool, recreate the pool as a RAIDZ configuration and
restore the data.

cs

On 07/14/10 16:01, Daniel Taylor wrote:
Cindy,
Hmm, I've using RAIDZ-2 on a nexentastor elsewhere (although that has 15 disks) and having looked quite a bit I agree that mirroring is very flexible in comparison.
I'll have to think about it and see if I can afford to lose the 2TB's.
The other solution I can think off is to export the pool, redo everything with RAIDZ and then import the data? I presume that would work? But I would lose settings like samba shares?
Thanks again!
- Daniel
On 14 Jul 2010, at 21:59, Cindy Swearingen wrote:
Yes, that is true. If you have 4 2 TB drives, you would only get 4 TBs
of usable disk space in a mirrored config.

The problem I see with your potential RAIDZ config, if I understand
it correctly, is that you can't add more disks to an existing RAIDZ config. You would need to create a 3 disk RAIDZ1 config with 1 spare
or a 4 disk RAIDZ1 config. You can't attach more disks to an existing
RAIDZ config.

I understand that using all potential disk capacity is a priority, but
I've been listening to this list for a long time and have come to
appreciate the flexibility and reliability of mirrored configs.

cs

On 07/14/10 14:38, Daniel Taylor wrote:
Cindy,
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly,
I had though about that idea but (forgive me if I'm wrong) won't that leave me with 4TB of space free from my (eventual) 8TB's worth of drives? So 2 of the 2TB drives will be used just for mirroring. Where as with RaidZ I'd only lose one drive and have 3 usable (so 6TB, which is what I was going for) I can only fit 4 drives into the server chassis and I was hoping to get 6TB out of it.
Thanks,
- Daniel
On 14 Jul 2010, at 21:28, Cindy Swearingen wrote:
Hi Daniel,

No conversion from a mirrored to RAIDZ configuration is available yet.

Mirrored pools are more flexible and generally provide good performance.

You can easily create a mirrored pool of two disks and then add two
more disks later. You can also replace each disk with larger disks
if needed. See the example below.

If you consider that disks are relatively inexpensive, then a mirrored
configuration is a very good option.

Thanks,

Cindy

# zpool create mpool mirror c2t6d0 c2t7d0
# zpool list mpool
NAME    SIZE  ALLOC   FREE    CAP  DEDUP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
mpool   136G  78.5K   136G     0%  1.00x  ONLINE  -
# zpool status mpool
pool: mpool
state: ONLINE
scan: none requested
config:

     NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
     mpool       ONLINE       0     0     0
       mirror-0  ONLINE       0     0     0
         c2t6d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
         c2t7d0  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors
# zpool add mpool mirror c2t8d0 c2t10d0
# zpool list mpool
NAME    SIZE  ALLOC   FREE    CAP  DEDUP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
mpool   272G   138K   272G     0%  1.00x  ONLINE  -
# zpool status mpool
pool: mpool
state: ONLINE
scan: none requested
config:

     NAME         STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
     mpool        ONLINE       0     0     0
       mirror-0   ONLINE       0     0     0
         c2t6d0   ONLINE       0     0     0
         c2t7d0   ONLINE       0     0     0
       mirror-1   ONLINE       0     0     0
         c2t8d0   ONLINE       0     0     0
         c2t10d0  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors


On 07/14/10 13:58, Daniel Taylor wrote:
Hello,
I'm about the build a opensolaris NAS system, currently we have two drives and are planning on adding two more at a later date (2TB enterprise level HDD are a bit expensive!). Whats the best configuration for setting up these drives bearing in mind I want to expand in the future? I was thinking of mirroring the drives and then converting to raidz some how? It will only be a max of 4 drives, the second two of which will be bought later.
Any ideas?

_______________________________________________
zfs-discuss mailing list
zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org
http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss

Reply via email to