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FlexRAID expansion
1 TopicFlexRAID expansion (OS 6.7.1)
I've been playing around with how I am going to manage my RN516 and EDA500, looking especially at expansion options once I've disabled XRAID so as to allow for two separate volumes. In so doing, I discovered a minor bug. I created two volumes, one RAID1 with two 2TB drives in the main chassis and one with 2 1TB's in the EDA500. Once that was all set up and sync'ed, I inserted another 1TB into the EDA500. The options presented to me were for the array of 2TB's and included "Expand" or "Cancel". "Add Parity" and "Add Group" were not available. But a 1TB drive cannot be used to expand an array of 2TB drives. If I clicked on it, nothing happened. And while nothing should happen except maybe an error message, it could be confusing to some that the option was available at all. It was not inherently clear that I had to click on the volume information for the other volume to see the options for it (though I suppose most would ultimately try it). Clicking on Expand did work for that volume, and it' still re-syncing but looks like it should work, converting to RAID5. This is on OS6.7.1, but I seriously doubt it's on the list of fixes for versions up to 6.7.4. Note that this ability is contrary to what is in ReadyNAS-Volume-Expansion, which states "With Flex-RAID formatting, if you want to add disks to expand your storage capacity, you must back up the data to another system, add a disk, reformat the RAID volume, and restore the data to the new RAID volume." and also "You can added (sic) disks physically using an EDA500 Expansion chassis. However this will be a separate Volume. X-RAID is not supported across different chassis." I have not tried expanding XRAID across chasses, but it is certainly showing me I can expand FlexRAID across them. Perhaps these capabilities are new, but they are very welcome and Netgear should make sure potential buyers are aware of this capability. Unless somebody can point me to an accurate description of current expansion capabililities, I will continue to do some experiments and see what happens. Still to try: Expanding an array with a larger drive (or two). Replacing a bad drive with a larger drive (I've seen some indication this won't work). Expanding an array of mixed drives that was created under XRAID and then changed to FlexRAID (no idea what to expect). Each test takes a long time to sync (which is why I'm using smallish drives for the experiments) and I may need to factory default between some tests to be sure I'm starting "clean", so it may take some time to do all this. While I don't plan to expand an array across the chassis boundry, I'll see about testing Expanding FlexRAID across chassis boundry (shown available, but not yet tested) and expanding XRAID across the chassis boundry.4.2KViews1like10Comments
