ekological
n00b
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2009
- Messages
- 40
Hi guys,
I'm trying to build a file server and settle on a OS. I have a 3ware 9650SE-16 port controller currently connected to four 2TB WD enterprise drives. I'm nowhere near the capacity that the new file server will offer and want to put off purchasing drives until I need them (the drives will inevitably become cheaper, etc), so I would like to add drives one or two at a time.
I played around with OpenSolaris because it's free and the benefits of ZFS intrigued me, but it doesn't seem that you can easily add drives. I first configured three drives in a RAID5 and OpenSolaris recognized it perfectly fine. I then added another drive and migrated the RAID5 to use all four drives. After the procedure was done (it took 3 days), I was able to see the physical size of the RAID volume was bigger, but the useable size was still the same as before adding the fourth drive. I think regular Solaris has an autoexpand feature, but it's not implemented in OpenSolaris.
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone out there has any "been there, done that" in terms of starting off a hardware raid volume with a small number of drives and add new drives over time and was able to use the new space.
TIA,
Chester
I'm trying to build a file server and settle on a OS. I have a 3ware 9650SE-16 port controller currently connected to four 2TB WD enterprise drives. I'm nowhere near the capacity that the new file server will offer and want to put off purchasing drives until I need them (the drives will inevitably become cheaper, etc), so I would like to add drives one or two at a time.
I played around with OpenSolaris because it's free and the benefits of ZFS intrigued me, but it doesn't seem that you can easily add drives. I first configured three drives in a RAID5 and OpenSolaris recognized it perfectly fine. I then added another drive and migrated the RAID5 to use all four drives. After the procedure was done (it took 3 days), I was able to see the physical size of the RAID volume was bigger, but the useable size was still the same as before adding the fourth drive. I think regular Solaris has an autoexpand feature, but it's not implemented in OpenSolaris.
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone out there has any "been there, done that" in terms of starting off a hardware raid volume with a small number of drives and add new drives over time and was able to use the new space.
TIA,
Chester