3220 Horizontal Upgrade Planned

Question

Just wanted to make sure I'm reading the manual correctly. We launced a 3220 box wtih 8 out of 12 drives populated, each drive is a 4TB red and the box has had some traffic with minor file loading and 1 LUN for a domain backup.

We're going to migrate the box to 12 drives but if I'm reading the manual correctly our Raid-6 configuration will need to be migrated to an X-Raid config before we can add drives... correct?

Is there an actual procedure doc that outlines the correct way to add drives? Power on, Power Off? Raid-6 to X-Raid before or after... looking for guideance.

3220 is at release 6.2.4 (Current release)

Thanks,
Miguel

StephenB · Answer

The manual does say that you need to switch to xraid in order to expand horizontally. &nbsp;That is easy to do, and with OS 6 it is non-destructive. &nbsp;Your data will remain intact, and you will still have dual redundancy. &nbsp;(If for some reason you do see a warning, and are asked to type "DESTROY", then certainly stop!)
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Though I am a huge fan of the WD Red drives, I'd be a bit worried about vibration with 12 in the chassis. &nbsp;You might want to add WDC Red Pros (which are spec'd for 16 bay NAS, and are enterprise class). &nbsp;I'd leave the existing Reds, but would likely replace any failed drives in the future with the Pro.
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Just a thought...
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radioguru6613 · Answer

Thanks Stephen,&nbsp;&nbsp;Actually the new 4 are PRO Series drives (WD4001FFSX) to be exact but you answered my #1 question, I won't loose the volume. It's not a production machine .. YET .. however after a couple of weeks of testing it's finding it's place to replace the Synoogy units that were in the rack before it.&nbsp;&nbsp;I wasn't confident in a propriertary raid format (X-Raid) so I opted to launch with the more establisted Raid-6 however I didn't read far enough in to see the discaimer about the need to be in X-Raid to expand the system.&nbsp;The button has been pushed, not it's just a matter of time for the system to become X-Raid.&nbsp;&nbsp;Thanks again.

mdgm-ntgr · Answer

X-RAID2 uses standard RAID levels. The automation of expansion is what makes X-RAID2 special.

radioguru6613 · Answer

I guess the only quesiton that remains is, power down the box and install the 4 new drives or hot entry the drives before I hit the convert switch?&nbsp;Also out of curiousity, what if any drawbacks are there to adding the 4 drives and creating a new Volume based on those 4 units in say a RAID-10?&nbsp;ML

StephenB · Answer

Convert to xraid now, and then hot insert the drives. &nbsp;I suggest one at a time, letting each resync complete before starting the next (then its easier to diagnose if something goes wrong).
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Resync on a large array like this will take a while though. &nbsp;So if you have a backup it might actually be quicker to rebuild the volume from scratch and reload the data.
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Your alternative idea of setting up a second volume is fine. &nbsp;Of course you are giving up 8 TB of capacity (12x4TB RAID-6 is 40 TB, 8x4TB RAID-6 + 4x4TB RAID-10 is 32 TB). You'll also need to manually balance storage across the two volumes. &nbsp;
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The RAID-10 volume would be faster - in part because the new disks are faster, and in part because RAID-10 writes are faster than RAID-6 writes. &nbsp;The two smaller volumes would be more resilient to disk failures than one massive RAID-6 array, and a resync when a drive is replaced in the future will be faster.&nbsp;
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If you are ok with giving up the space, I'd go for the two volumes myself.

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3220 Horizontal Upgrade Planned

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