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Forum Discussion
RN102 migrating to ReadyNAS Ultra 6
Hi, I am lookingto establish the optimal migration process from my RN102 (Arm based CPU), containing 2 x6TB drives currently set up as individual volumes under JBOD and holding roughly 6TB of data, ...
Ok. So you have 6x2TB in the Ultra now, and you want 4x2TB+4TB+8TB.
If you use XRAID in the Ultra, then you'd end up with a 12 TB RAID-5 volume (sum the disks and subtract the smallest), which actually does match the total space you have on the RN102 now. But it is wasting 4 TB of space (and is only 2 TB bigger than your current volume size). You can fix that by upgrading one of the remaining 2 TB drives to 8 TB - but when you do that you will run into one of the expansion limits of the 4.2.x firmware. You can overcome that by converting the Ultra to OS-6 now (while it is still empty).
Another option is to switch to flexraid on the Ultra, and create a 4x2TB RAID-5 volume (6 TB capacity). Then create 4 TB "D" RAID-0 volume and an 8 TB "E" RAID-0 volume. Then you'd have 18 TB of space across the 3 volumes, with one volume having RAID redundancy.
A third option is to leave the disk configurations as they are for now, and use the RN102 to back up the Ultra. That assumes that 10 TB is large enough to do what you want.
You should of course first check that your FTP problem is resolved by the Ultra. If it isn't, you could then convert it to OS-6 and retest.
Thanks Stephen. Very helpful as always!
The Ultra6 already has OS6.10.2 set up by previous owner.
Is X-Raid incompatible with manually denoting say one or two of the 6 disks in the Ultra6 chassis as separate JBOD volumes? Or am I stuck with using FlexRaid if I want to do that?
I was thinking maybe have 5x2Tb in raid 5, the 8TB as JBOD volume, and sticking the 4TB disk in my PC, giving me 16TB total in the NAS.
Over time, as and when I upgrade or replace one of the 2TB drives, say another 8Tb drive, that coud be my prompt to kill the 8TB JBOD volume and let it merge with X-Raid volume at same time?
Would be nice if X-Raid could handle the expansion of that volume automatically for me, rather than making me start again (which Flex Raid seems to need?)
Meanwhile I figure that whatever happens with the bottleneck FTP issue, I am probably better off comitting to migrating to the Ultra6 anyway as fundamentally better hardware?
With OS-6, Flexraid is more flexible (also a bit more complicated). You can
- switch to flexraid
- destroy the current volume
- remove two disks
- re-create the a new RAID-5 volume. Choose a volume name that doesn't match the ones on the RN102.
You should then be able to export the volumes on the RN102 and then add those two disks to the Ultra. It should import the volumes and the shares. Note I haven't needed to export/import myself - but Sandshark has played around with this, so hopefully he will chime in.
Do make sure you have a backup of the RN102 files though - there's always a chance something will go wrong.
ArchPrime wrote:The Ultra6 already has OS6.10.2 set up by previous owner.
Is X-Raid incompatible with manually denoting say one or two of the 6 disks in the Ultra6 chassis as separate JBOD volumes? Or am I stuck with using FlexRaid if I want to do that?
XRAID only handles one volume. So you will need to use FlexRaid.
ArchPrime wrote:
I was thinking maybe have 5x2Tb in raid 5, the 8TB as JBOD volume, and sticking the 4TB disk in my PC, giving me 16TB total in the NAS.
That of course will work too.
ArchPrime wrote:Over time, as and when I upgrade or replace one of the 2TB drives, say another 8Tb drive, that coud be my prompt to kill the 8TB JBOD volume and let it merge with X-Raid volume at same time?
Switching back to XRAID doesn't always work. But if you leave the RAID-5 volume untouched, you should be able to destroy the 8 TB jbod volume. Then switch back to XRAID and add the disks. It'd be best to unformat the jbod disk, so the NAS isn't confused when you re-insert it.
If you left a slot empty, you could also leave the 4x2TB volume alone, and convert the 8 TB volume to RAID-1. That path would preserve the data on the jbod volume.
Actually, you can move the drives from the 102 to the Ultra running OS6 and not lose the data. That is one of the advantages of updating a legacy NAS to OS6. You should delete any apps if you are moving between ARM and Intel CPU, as you are. You can re-install them after the migration.
You just can't do it and leave any existing drives in the new unit (Ultr, in your case). And you can't put the original drives form the new one back in and get to any data on them (at least through the GUI) unless you first exported them. But since the 2TB's are empty, you don't care about any data on them, which makes it a lot easier.
I assume you want to add the two 2TB drives to the array, which you can't do if you start with an array of larger drives unless you originally started with at least one 2TB drive.. And, that's the rub. At some point, to get full use of the new drives, you are going to have to start fresh, meaning backing up the data and restoring it. If you think you did at one point start your 102 array with 2TB drives, post the contents of MDSTAT.log from the log ZIP and let us confirm it. In that case, you should be able to add the 2TB's to the existing 102 array once mounted in the Ultra.
I think your best bet (assuming no such luck as having started with 2TB on the 102) is to move the old drives from the 102 to the Ultra, switch to FlexRAID, and then make a separate RAID1 volume out of the 2TB's. That'll give you 2TB more, though you'll have to manually distribute files between the volumes. There is actually a way to make them part of the same volume "under the hood" with SSH, but once you do, the OS may not know how to do additional expansions. And if you're not at last a little familiar with Linux, something could go horribly wrong.
It's not the most efficient use of the drives, so, at some time in the future, add another 8TB, copy the data from the 2TB volume over to the larger one, and retire the 2TB's.
Thank you very much Sandshark, and Stephen for your very helpful and well informed replies.
I had already started and was a day or so into an rsync transfer from RN102 to Untra 6 when I read the suggustion below about possibly just moving the larger drives over, since both enclosures are running OS6.
Cest le via.
At least an opportunity to rationalise folder structures and what gets copied over to new NAS.
The strategy I had already somewhat comitted to by then was to create a Raid 5 array with 5x2TB disks, giving me 8TB, and to move the 8TB from RN102 over to give me the same again . I could then remove a 2TB drive from my PC, and use the 4TB from RN102
This will leave me a pool of 3 spare 2TB drives (counting another one I have sitting around) to swap in to the raid array as drives fail - assuming they don't all need to be identical for raid 5 to use them?
I end up with two 8TB volumes , in conjuction with a cloudbackup service capacity of 5TB (Idrive subsription).
Occured to me that limiting NAS volume size might actually be a good idea if it imposes some sort of discipline/structure that is somewhat aligned with cloudbackup capacity. One volume can serve just as the local backup copy of what gets uploaded to cloud.
My thinking was that the 2TB drives that came with Ultra 6 are nearly 10 years old and are WD green desktop drives , so presumably not going to be hugely reliable for much longer - but that starting with a pool of 3 spares to offset this risk, this might be one way to extract the maximum use from them and to delay new drive purchases for as long as possible, to take advantage of declining cost/TB over time.
This volume might be the logical local backup copy of what goes to cloudbackup service
The 8TB drive is a 3 year old Seagate desktop drive, and while on paper is a lot faster and should be more reliable for the moment than any of the given 2TB drives, there are a lot more eggs in one basket if it fails, with few affordable/practical recovery options as a JBOD - so thinking nothing going to this drive should be irreplacable or vital - until such time as it is pared with another 8TB drive to achieve some redundancy. in a raid array Might end up being general repository for media files and similar in the meantime - which are becoming less precious now that Netflix etc are on the scene.
Interestingly when I tested the newer 8TB drive in RN102 enclosure vs the older 2TB drives in Ultra6 using NAStester benchmark software (checks NAS to windows file read/write speeds), the Ultra6 enclosure tested substantially faster at both reading and writing despite the lower internal I/O speeds - suggusting the enclosure is the key factor, not nominal specs of drive it houses
Also, for the benefit of anyone doing the same, it seems that rsync transfer initiated from the faster NAS enclosure gives best speeds in NAS to NAS transfers, and that this is roughly twice as fast as going via windows (rsync still glacially slow at average 15Mb/s - so moving the whole disk over would definitely have been my first choice. had I not already started)
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