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RN104 and Raid
Hi, I've read a few posts but have not found an answer to the following. Is there any way to force an RN104 into Raid 1 mode when populated with four HDDs? And if there is what is the pat...
Sandshark wrote:
Budget and whether you want to have to manually spread shares across the volumes are two main drivers if drive sizes and rotation speeds are consistent.
Expanding RAID-10 might be more complicated than expanding two RAID-1 volumes.
One thing to think about is whether you actually need two RAID-1 arrays, or if one will do. Drive prices (in $/TB) are pretty flat right now between 8 and 12 TB. Getting one pair of larger drives now, and leaving two bays empty for the future might also be a good strategy.
StephenB 's solution will give you two separate volumes. But you'll have to manually split shares and deal with two size limits between the two volumes. It sounds to me more like you want RAID10 -- two concatinated drives mirrored by two other concatinated drives. While the ReadyNAS can do that in FlexRAID mode, I don't believe it can go from RAID1 to RAID10 since the underlying MDADM can't go directly between them. Via SSH, you would have to convert the RAID1 to a single drive RAID0 (which is what a ReadyNAS JBOD drive is "under the hood"), and you could then convert to RAID 10 either via SSH or the GUI. If you are comfortable doing it, here my article on downsizing a RAID: Reducing-RAID-size-removing-drives-WITHOUT-DATA-LOSS-is-possible. Here is another useful article that's not ReadyNAS specific: Converting-raid1-to-raid10-online.
Frankly, this takes a long time and backing up and starting from scratch as RAID10 is probably the better solution if the two volume solution isn't what you are looking for.
Many thanks to both StephenB and Sandshark for their prompt and informative replies.
On balance I believe the pair of concatenated drives would be the optimum solution, but it raises some questions that I will ask for clarification:
1. Is the best way forward to use drives from the same manufacturer and of the same capacity?
2. I suspect that proceeding in stages, ie a pair of drive now in Raid 1 followed later by a another pair of drives - which I think would entail backing up the raid 1 pair then configuring the four drives as a pair of concatenated drives in raid 10 and then re-establishing the contents from the backup would be a quite long process?
3. A better solution, since I have the contents of the RN104 already backed up, would be to acquire the four drives and then proceed thus avoiding the intermediate step of an initial two drives in raid 1? Of course this raises the question of a rather large expenditure of cash that I was hoping I could spread across a few months.
Thanks again for the replies
OzzieNASuser wrote:
1. Is the best way forward to use drives from the same manufacturer and of the same capacity?
With RAID-10 should be the same speed and it would be simplest if they were the same capacity.
If budget is a constraint, I'd proceed step-wise. Personally I wouldn't rule out have two RAID-1 volumes. You can simply add the the second volume, and shift a couple of shares over to the new volume. Balancing the space between them isn't that difficult.
Another thing to look at is the results of drive failures. For both configurations, you can lose one drive and certain combinations of two and lose nothing. With RAID10, there are conditions under which you could lose two drives and lose everything. With two separate volumes, the worst with two drives failed is losing one of the two volumes. You didn't ask about it, but RAID6 can be grown from your current volume (and in steps, RAID5 then RAID6) and can lose any two drives and still retain all data. But it can be slower.
Budget and whether you want to have to manually spread shares across the volumes are two main drivers if drive sizes and rotation speeds are consistent. If you have a lot of data that's archive and can be on on volume, and other data that is more active for the other volume, then it makes it easier to deal with multiple volumes, since one needs little "care and feeding".
Sandshark wrote:
Budget and whether you want to have to manually spread shares across the volumes are two main drivers if drive sizes and rotation speeds are consistent.
Expanding RAID-10 might be more complicated than expanding two RAID-1 volumes.
One thing to think about is whether you actually need two RAID-1 arrays, or if one will do. Drive prices (in $/TB) are pretty flat right now between 8 and 12 TB. Getting one pair of larger drives now, and leaving two bays empty for the future might also be a good strategy.
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