Vertical expansion - not - encryption?

[Michael_Oz]

So this exercise was to do vertical expansion of my RAID6 RN316.

(was 6x3TB, now 4x10TB & 2x3TB, so I should get +14TB)

After the upgrading resyncing the forth disc, I was hoping to get more storage...

No.

Waited a while.

Rebooted.

No.

Downloaded logs.

rn-expand.log

Jul 21 17:22:27 ME-NAS-316A rn-expand[3182]: Trying auto-expand (in-place)
Jul 21 17:22:27 ME-NAS-316A rn-expand[3182]: Considering inplace auto-expansion for N316AR6
Jul 21 17:22:27 ME-NAS-316A rn-expand[3182]: Checking if RAID disk sda is expandable...
Jul 21 17:22:27 ME-NAS-316A rn-expand[3182]: Checking if RAID disk sdb is expandable...
Jul 21 17:22:27 ME-NAS-316A rn-expand[3182]: Trying auto-extend (grow onto additional disks)
Jul 21 17:22:27 ME-NAS-316A rn-expand[3182]: auto_extend: Checking disk sda...
Jul 21 17:22:27 ME-NAS-316A rn-expand[3182]: auto_extend: Checking disk sdb...
Jul 21 17:22:27 ME-NAS-316A rn-expand[3182]: auto_extend: Checking disk sdc...
Jul 21 17:22:27 ME-NAS-316A rn-expand[3182]: auto_extend: Checking disk sdd...
Jul 21 17:22:27 ME-NAS-316A rn-expand[3182]: auto_extend: Checking disk sde...
Jul 21 17:22:27 ME-NAS-316A rn-expand[3182]: auto_extend: Checking disk sdf...
Jul 21 17:22:27 ME-NAS-316A rn-expand[3182]: Trying xraid-expand (tiered expansion)
Jul 21 17:22:27 ME-NAS-316A rn-expand[3182]: Skipping X-RAID auto-expansion on encrypted pool N316AR6

So, is there a limitation on vertical expansion of encrypted volumes?

Is unload/recreate/reload the only option?

[Sandshark]

Is the encryption key inserted?

[Michael_Oz]

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@Sandshark wrote:

Is the encryption key inserted?

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Yep. I can access the volume, everything seems normal, bar the non-expansion.

Disc Test Tick.

[JennC]

Hello Michael_Oz,

You cannot expand volume on an encrypted volume. I believe it is a product limitation.

Regards,

[Michael_Oz]

OK, I need to unload everything, destroy, create, reload everything.

So, in planing for my new volume config, is horizontal expansion of encrypted volumes supported?

[JennC]

Hello Michael_Oz,

The way our ReadyNAS volume encryption works does not understand volume expansion, horizontal or vertical. 🙂

Regards,

[Michael_Oz]

Well it would be really handy if that was in the manual. I just checked it.

All super-dooper XRAID, can't do anything when encrypted. Really handy.

[StephenB]

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@Michael_Oz wrote:

Well it would be really handy if that was in the manual. I just checked it.

All super-dooper XRAID, can't do anything when encrypted. Really handy.

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I've passed this feedback on to Netgear

[Michael_Oz]

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@JennC wrote:

The way our ReadyNAS volume encryption works does not understand volume expansion, horizontal or vertical. 🙂

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Incorrect.

It would be nice to get a technical answer to which flavours are supported with encryption. (And having that in the manual)

I just did the following. (after backing up)

DESTROYED the XRAID volume.

Removed all discs.

Started with one 3TB disc, created a volume, WITH encryption. (which is FlexRAID)

Added another 3TB disc, added it as parity for RAID1.

Added another 3TB disc, added it as expansion. (htop showed a process md12nreshape IIRC, n=5/6 can't remember).

Result was a RAID5 encrypted volume.

So horizontal expansion of FlexRAID (at least for 2->3 discs) works on encrypted volumes.

I then sequentially replaced the 3TB with 10TB discs.

When the last one finished resync, it grew in size to 18TB, and started another resync. (still in progress)

So vertical expansion of FlexRAID, where all discs in the array are replaced, works on encrypted volumes.

There are obviously other variants which I did not test, such as RAID5->6, adding further discs as RAID5 and/or 6 etc, and XRAID equivalents.

I suspect it is only the un-equal upgrade of XRAID that is not supported with encryption.

My original question was:

> I need to unload everything, destroy, create, reload everything.

> So, in planing for my new volume config, is horizontal expansion of encrypted volumes supported?

Seems FlexRAID is the answer.

[Michael_Oz]

Subsequent to that, I added 3x3TB drives, with the initial intention to setup another FlexRAID-5 volume.

When I added them there was a button on the original volume, 'Add Group', clicking it explained that it can add another RAID array and map it to the original volume, thus expanding the 18TB RAID5 (3x10TB, Discs 4-6) to 23TB (RAID Group #1, Discs 1-3 3x3TB & RAID Group #2, Discs 4-6 3x10TB). Resync ensued.

BTW that leaves me with a 10TB cold spare and 4 3TB spares (1 original cold spare for the old 6x3 array), some of which will be repurposed

So now I'm doing it all over again, I chose a bad volume name for initial testing...it'd be hand to be able to rename a volume.

So there are a range of encrypted expansion option, but prob. not XRAID. Hopefully this is of use for you dear reader.

[OOM-9]

Thanks for the extensive testing/update Michael_Oz.

There is support for Vertical and Horizontal expansion on Flex-RAID and it handled a little differently than X-RAID as you were mentioning.

The Flex-RAID has Vertical expansion based on the the partition and expands the partitions once all of the drives participating in the volume (RAID Group) reach a common larger size. 

In 6.7.0+ is one of the first firmwares that allowed Flex-RAID to expand a single drive to the volume. The previous Flex-RAID expand has been moved to the Add (RAID) Group and we provide the option to concatinate or stripe the volumes across the RAID Groups.

The X-RAID handles the Vertical and Horizontal expansion in a more automatic fashion to provide the most capacity from your drives. To get the most capacity used for the volumes, we would create multiple partitions to get the most out of the drive's capacity.

Note: The vertical exapnsion would kick in when you have the correct number of drives with the RAID configuration. RAID5 = 3 drives; RAID6 = 4;

The encrypted volumes that are part of the Flex-RAID has the encyption key for the main parition, and does not handle multiple partitions for the volume one drive with our current implementation.

TL;DR. Encrypted volumes support Vertical and Horizonal expansion best when all of the drives are the same (larger) size.

[Michael_Oz]

> and does not handle multiple partitions for the volume one drive with our current implementation.

Thanks @OOM-9 but I'm not understanding that phrase?

[OOM-9]

The part that might have been lost when I was trying to shorten that part was referring to the X-RAID expansion:

"To get the most capacity used for the volumes, we would create multiple partitions to get the most out of the drive's capacity."

The encrypted (Flex-RAID) volumes do not handle the multiple partitions (underneath the data volume) that are created on disks with the X-RAID when doing the staggered/incramental vertical expansion.