I'm in the fortunate position of having 2 ReadyNAS Pro 6 devices at home.
NAS1: main NAS equipped with 6x3TB drives in dual redundancy.
NAS2: backup destination for NAS1 with 3x2TB and 3x3TB drives in single redundancy.
The backup is daily over rsync of Volume: c, running on NAS1.
If I count correctly, I would need 4 drives to fail out of the 12 that are installed before any data is lost, which gives a good feeling.
NAS1 is getting close to capacity and I'm beginning to think about how I will go about expanding the array. I think the simplest option would be to move from 3TB drives to 4TB drives replacing the drives one-by-one and letting the array rebuild and then expand. With dual redundancy, I think this should keep me below the 16TB expansion limit, but I will be getting close.
However, given that I have a full backup over rsync, I'm really tempted to jump the 16TB limit with the expensive proposition of 6x5TB drives in dual redundancy and then recover the rsync backup.
If I were to create a >16TB array from scratch, what are your recommendations for how to manage the configuration and data recovery to the new array?
There is also the 8 TiB growth limit, so whether "one disk at a time" will succeed depends also on what was installed in the NAS when you did the last factory reset.
If you go over the 16 TiB limit, you need to be careful with mixed size drives. If the first phase install is < 16 TiB, then the second phase (vertical expansion) will fail. If you start with 6x5TB, then that won't be an issue.
The normal rule for prep is (a) first uninstall any unneeded add-ons (b) save the config (don't bother saving any of the data volume) (c) update the backup (d) update firmware if desired.
After the reset, (e) first install any addons you are carrying over (f) restore the configuration files (g) restore the data from backup.
The order matters, you need to reinstall addons before you restore the config file. On (g) its faster to restore using NFS first, then run again with rsync.
You are aware that 6 tb red drives are available? Restarting with a >16 tb volume is the way to do it, and dual redundancy is appropriate. You can restore from your backup using backup jobs . If you remove the old disks, number them according to their position, you will effectively have another copy of your data in case something goes wrong. They could be replaced in their original positions and the NAS restarted.
As for config, just back it up and restore it once the new volume is up. If you have addons, install these first before restoring the config, as per StephenB's posting.
Yes, I am aware that 6TB reds are available, but at $300 each, this pushes this upgrade to $2000 including tax... My budget is probably $1500.
I still have 1TB available in my current volume, so I have some time to plan and wait for the premiums on the 5 or 6 TB drives to come down. 6TB drives for $200 each would be very nice! And might actually happen soon if the HDD industry statements about 8TB drives coming soon are realized: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/18 ... he-horizon
StephenB: why is there a need to do step (g) a second time if it is restored over NFS? Is this to get the permissions correct using rsync?
You need at least 4 new drives to get any expansion on the old array, so you should take that into account when you figure out the cost/benefits.
6x4TB would cost $1038 at the moment (Amazon US pricing for WD40EFRX), and would net you 16TB 5x6TB would $1500 (Amazon US pricing for WD60EFRX) get net you 18 TB of space with 1 free slot.
Anything over 4 TB takes you off the HCL. Since Netgear will likely deny you support anyway if you go that route, I suggest you try OS6. That would require rebuilding from scratch (no ability to restore config files). That also opens up a few more growth paths.
4x6TB+2x3TB for instance, would also give you 18 TB of space, for $1200. You can't do that configuration with OS4, for the reason I note above.
Sunday Afternoon wrote:
StephenB: why is there a need to do step (g) a second time if it is restored over NFS? Is this to get the permissions correct using rsync?
Yes. It shouldn't be necessary really, but it runs very quickly and also sweeps in anything that might have changed during the restore or somehow gotten missed.
Would I be able to recover my data in a similar fashion to (g) if I were to attempt this?
Yes, though you might lose owner/group information. nouser/nogroup on the pro can't be matched to guest/guest on OS6, and the easiest workaround is to reset all owners/groups to guest/guest.
Though someone should confirm that you can get to flexraid/raid 6 with that disk mix - it ought to work, but OS6 handles dual redundancy a bit differently. I suspect mdgm either knows or can find out...
