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How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

Dwarf1
Aspirant

How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

Hi there,

I've got a question about the snapshot space on ReadyNAS Pro.

I saw on this topic (viewtopic.php?f=66&t=35266) that since 4.2.7 firmware, the "resize snapshot" option has disapeared from the frontview. Unfortunately my RNDP is in 4.2.9 😞

But ... (because there is a but :p) I got an ssh access to my NAS, and I found a script called "resize_snapshot" into /frontview/bin directory. This script seems to be used to manage the snapshot volume space (increase it or reduce it).

My question is simple, can anyone of you tell me how to use this script ? Is it as simple as "/frontview/bin/resize_snapshot <arg>" where <arg> is the volume space desired in % ??

I read that space cannot be set under 1% of total volume space (viewtopic.php?p=54465#p54465) when the operation is made from the frontview.. Is there a chance here that we can set the size to 0% ??

Thanks for your help !

@++
Dwarf
Message 1 of 37
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

Do you have a Pro Business Edition or Pro Pioneer?
Message 2 of 37
Dwarf1
Aspirant

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

Hi mdgm,

My ReadyNas is a Pro Business Edition
Message 3 of 37
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

I think the advice I've read elsewhere on the forum for your issue is to either backup all your data and factory default or wait for the re-enabling of snapshot resizing in a future version of the RAIDiator x86 firmware
Message 4 of 37
Dwarf1
Aspirant

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

OK thanks!

I'll wait till this option is re-enabled unless one of the readynas master give me the right syntax of the script command 🙂

@++
Dwarf
Message 5 of 37
Knothaid2
Tutor

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

I would like to add to this....I also have a ReadyNas Pro and I am running 4.2.9....Well I am adding disks to the original 3 disk config and EVERYTHING is being allocated to the snapshot! I now have more snapshot space than I have online storage space and I still have one more disk to add. WTHeck?????

This needs to be fixed ASAP or this system is useless. I need drive space, not snapshot space!
Message 6 of 37
Jedi_Knight
Tutor

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

Knothaid:

Have you try this?

Step(s):
1. Make sure disk spindown feature is disable.
2. Make sure "Disable Journaling" Feature in System->Performance tab is uncheck.
3. Reboot the unit. You might needs to reboot twice.. but make sure you give 5-10mintues between each reboot.
Message 7 of 37
Knothaid2
Tutor

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

Yes, in fact, it would not grow the volume until those things were done. I now have 1.9T of Snapshot space and 1.7T of storage space and one spare drive. All disks are exactly the same model Seagates.

Edit> Of course it would only grow one disk at a time and it took a reboot each time to make it happen. It reported one disk had data on it and I needed to either remove for 10 seconds and reinsert or reboot. There was no data on it that I could tell, it was new out of the package same as the other two. Each disk took about 48 hours to resize the volume.
Message 8 of 37
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

You can contact technical support (see link in my sig) for help if you like. Post your case number in this thread.
Message 9 of 37
Knothaid2
Tutor

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

I find the relay to support kinda confusing. You are asking me to go pay for them to fix something that was not broke until they "fixed" it. Yet here we have a support forum for just such answers and many time you direct folks away...So perhaps there is no point to the forums????
Message 10 of 37
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

The Jedi can help out us users in some situations. But just answering a question won't necessarily help. If you can contact support (if outside of first 90 days you need to contact using Online Submission unless you've purchased extended phone support) and get a case number, then the Jedi may be able to look at that and take some pity on you if you're not getting anywhere. But they are not support. It's nice to show if you can that you've tried to work through the problem with support. If your NAS is still under warranty you should have no problems with Online Submissions to Technical Support. If you have a Pro, unless you've voided the warranty (e.g. by unsupported hardware modifications) you should be still under warranty.

I forgot something before. If you have a Pioneer and have an issue with a snapshot, try this add-on: RemSnap add-on.
Message 11 of 37
Knothaid2
Tutor

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

Thank you, makes more sense now. I do have a Pro and a 2100,

I will add, setting to Default is NOT a reasonable fix for a business system. That is the only solution I have seen so far. Hoping that a more reasonable one appears either through my efforts or the efforts of others who also seem quite frustrated that this issue even exists at all.
Message 12 of 37
Knothaid2
Tutor

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

mdgm wrote:
You can contact technical support (see link in my sig) for help if you like. Post your case number in this thread.


Here is my case number: 11923684, Apparently if you have the Pro Business and you have upgraded to anything that has the Snapshot disabled you are SOL. I find this incredible that in essence a business product still in its useful service life has been rendered useless for a major portion of its designed features. I hope this is not the case, but with the Snapshot disabled and one of the main selling features of being able to dynamically add storage, I am afraid the current facts point to that conclusion. Obviously I am disappointed, but still hopeful. This is a production machine and currently I am screwed and destined for a LOT of extra work to get what we paid for. 😞
Message 13 of 37
kboudre
Aspirant

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

Has anyone heard anymore on this? From what I have seen even the Beta's being released have snapshot resizing turned off.
Message 14 of 37
Knothaid2
Tutor

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

kboudre wrote:
Has anyone heard anymore on this? From what I have seen even the Beta's being released have snapshot resizing turned off.


Netgear is disconcertingly quiet on this MAJOR issue. It is causing disruption in the business community, so the underlying problem must be big for this kind of action (or non action depending on your perspective). Frankly, I will no longer recommend Ready NAS to any business user/IT professional because of this. They are not even sharing this information with 1st level support, so they lead you to believe there is no possible solution but to move you data off the NAS and then completely reset it to the factory defaults to accomplish what the Snapshot interface used to allow. This move in essence renders the X-raid useless as sold. I will also comment that since it has been neglected in several updates to Radiator and no offer of a timeline, it does not appear serious to Netgear. Assumptions on anecdotal evidence on these boards and support cases for sure, but that is all we can do since Netgear is not talking about it and we have only the answers/non answers to our questions and pleas for support on this issue.
Message 15 of 37
Jedi_Knight
Tutor

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

The release note clearly state that "Snapshot resizing is disable in the firmware release" as current limitation..http://www.readynas.com/?p=3501
Message 16 of 37
kboudre
Aspirant

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

Jedi Knight wrote:
The release note clearly state that "Snapshot resizing is disable in the firmware release" as current limitation..http://www.readynas.com/?p=3501


Clearly stating "Snapshot resizing is disable in the firmware release" is not the same as saying once you install this firmware version any new drive space will go to snapshots and not usable space.

So after adding a new 1.5TB drive I now have 961GB assigned to the snapshots not used volumes space. That is my complaint.
Message 17 of 37
Jedi_Knight
Tutor

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

kboudre wrote:
Jedi Knight wrote:
The release note clearly state that "Snapshot resizing is disable in the firmware release" as current limitation..http://www.readynas.com/?p=3501


Clearly stating "Snapshot resizing is disable in the firmware release" is not the same as saying once you install this firmware version any new drive space will go to snapshots and not usable space.

So after adding a new 1.5TB drive I now have 961GB assigned to the snapshots not used volumes space. That is my complaint.


In your case, you had enable disk spin down or disable journaling options as it was a expected behavior for multiple disks hot-add not to expand the volume. Disks are being process one disk at the time for data volume expansion and once the process is incomplete, the free space is added to snapshot space and indeed you will need to reboot to continue the expansion. Right after the 1st disk expansion, unit will retry another available disk for expansion after reboot. At that time, the 2nd and 3rd disk has been in the system (due to hot-add process that created the root/swap partitions) and being used before (as it had root data on those drive). So it asked you to hot-remove and hot-add the disk to re-try the expansion again as we do not blindly erase the disk for expansion during cold boot up.

If you do not had those options enable in 1st place, you shouldn't need to reboot your system for expansion as disk will be expand one disk at the time w/o adding the free space to snapshot reserved.

Hope this explain and I had suggested to add clear content (text) in hot-add event message.
Message 18 of 37
kboudre
Aspirant

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

I am not sure what you are trying to tell me. I was only adding one drive. I do have disable Full data journaling set.
Message 19 of 37
Knothaid2
Tutor

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

kboudre wrote:
Jedi Knight wrote:
The release note clearly state that "Snapshot resizing is disable in the firmware release" as current limitation..http://www.readynas.com/?p=3501


Clearly stating "Snapshot resizing is disable in the firmware release" is not the same as saying once you install this firmware version any new drive space will go to snapshots and not usable space.

So after adding a new 1.5TB drive I now have 961GB assigned to the snapshots not used volumes space. That is my complaint.


I beg to differ with you that these options outlined should actually work. In my case, NO disk resize would happen without changing them and the Frontview software also suggested changing them. It would not do an actual resize at all without them being set properly. When it did the resize, it automatically assigned the space to Snapshot. And it left the 6th disk out altogether having done the other two one at a a time.

But that is beside the point. The fact is that the dynamic resize is the MAJOR selling point of Netgear X-Raid product line. The MAJOR selling point is fubar and non functional at worst, and flaky and needing a bunch of massage at best....And the ONLY stated correction for a business user who is using the product in a production environment is you are SOL, back up your data somewhere else, take it offline and reset the entire unit to factory default. Then begin restoring data, iSCSI drives etc. This solution makes the product totally unacceptable as a business product. Netgear needs to do better than this if they are serious about the business class at all. So far, the company has buried their head in the sand over a MAJOR flaw. Nothing personal, but there are no other facts to show another conclusion....it has been disabled for what... at least 3 updates? There is no date to re-enable. There is no urgency shown at all. Imagine if MS SQL Server could not do queries but was otherwise functional sometime after rollout in production environments and a few updates.....That, IMO, is how serious this issue is in a business environment with regards to storage. You cannot dismiss it to say that it was stated....heck the first time it was added after the fact as an oversight brought up by a forum member IIRC. If you have your unit set to auto update, no notification exists at all either. Things to consider.
Message 20 of 37
hbroadie
Aspirant

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

*Bump*

Sorry, I see that the firmware released earlier this week still has the snapshot resizing disabled. I followed jedi's advice and disabled spin-down and unchecked the disable journaling option.

I had three 1.5TB drives in my ReadyNas Pro and added a fourth 1.5TB. My online storage did not increase but I now have 1.4TB of snapshot volume. I have rebooted multiple times and I have even tried resyncing the fourth drive. Any other help would be appreciated besides backing up and resetting the ReadyNas since I would need to buy a 3TB hard drive to back up onto. No need to point out that I should be backing up the ReadyNas regularly anyway. 🙂

Has anyone tried the removed "PRO-RemSnap_1.1" add-on.

Thanks.
Message 21 of 37
timallen
Aspirant

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

I have exactly the same problem - I have just added a third 2TB disk to an existing 2X2TB setup. I now have 2TB of usable space and 2TB reserved for snapshots - not what I was going for!

Could someone clarify the correct procedure for adding a disk without it being used as snapshot space??
Message 22 of 37
timallen
Aspirant

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

I would really appreciate if anyone could offer suggestions re my problem above since, as others have stated, this is a major issue - I need to add more storage to our NAS before we use up remaining space and I do not want to have to rebuild it.
Message 23 of 37
fuko747
Aspirant

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

I'm also planning to add more storage space to my Readynas Pro Business. Has this issue with growing snapshot space when adding a new drive been resolved?
If not, when is the resizing of snapshot space going to be enabled again, so we can reduce its size after adding a drive?

Thanks
Message 24 of 37
jerryk1
Aspirant

Re: How to resize / remove the snapshot reserved space ?

fuko747 wrote:
I'm also planning to add more storage space to my Readynas Pro Business. Has this issue with growing snapshot space when adding a new drive been resolved?
If not, when is the resizing of snapshot space going to be enabled again, so we can reduce its size after adding a drive?

Thanks


I don't think it has been resolved. I just replaced 2 of my 1 TB drives with 2 TB drives and my snapshot size went from 10 GB to 971 GB. It might be time to look at other vendors if Netgear cannot fix the snapshot issue.
Message 25 of 37
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