How to upgrade a ZFS RAID-Z array to larger disks on OpenSolaris?
Solution 1
- Offline drive #1.
- Replace the old drive with the newer, high-capacity drive.
- zpool replace the drive.
- Wait for the replacement to be rebuilt.
- Goto step 1 and repeat for each successive drive in the array.
You may need to export and then import the zpool once this procedure is complete; the pool will then show the increased size. No downtime is required, but if a drive does go south while you're upgrading your array, you will lose everything, as with four total disks you presumably have a 3+1 setup. (The odds aren't that high, but Murphy never sleeps.)
The official source: "Replacing Devices in a Storage Pool" in the ZFS Administration Guide. The ZFS Best Practices Guide is also useful.
Solution 2
I would like to add that replacing a non defective drive makes the raid less fail proof. You can actually fill the replacing drive first with data before taking out the smaller drive. So the order will become.
- Attach bigger drive (can even be through usb)
zpool replace smallerdrive biggerdrive
- wait
- when it is done take out smaller drive, or whatever you need to do.
- repeat
- and at the end you might need to run
zpool set autoexpand=on pool
Now murphy is less of a problem
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Esko Luontola
Programmer (using TDD/BDD) Interaction Designer (using GUIDe+GDD)
Updated on September 17, 2022Comments
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Esko Luontola almost 2 years
I'm planning on installing OpenSolaris on my home server (right now it has Linux) and I would like to know how to prepare for upgrading the server to have larger hard drives in the future. Now the server has 4x 400GB SATA drives and I would install OpenSolaris with ZFS RAID-Z on them. Some time later this or next year I'm going to upgrade the drives to maybe 4x 1TB SATA drives.
How can I do the upgrading and increasing of the partition size with ZFS? Is it a simple and painless operation (e.g. replace one drive at a time and ZFS will automatically resize itself to use the full space), or are some special steps required? Can it be done without shutting down the system?
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Josh about 12 years+1 for "You may need to export and then import the zpool once this procedure is complete" -- the procedure of replacing wasn't working for me until I took this action.
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bahamat almost 12 yearsYou don't need to reimport it if the
autoexpand
option is set toon
for the pool. -
Peterdk about 6 yearsFor people doing this on Linux: I replaced each drive succesfully, but it would not increase space when running
autoexpand=on
. I needed to runzpool online -e poolname devicename
for each device, and then it worked. Importing/exporting did nothing. -
Tony over 3 yearsfor other zfs newbies, a hint that the zpool replace command is
zpool replace <poolname> <smallerdrive> <biggerdrive>
. That is, it needs the pool name before the device names