Posts by aitrus00

  • Replacing smaller drives for larger ones

    If you are looking to replace smaller data/parity drives with larger ones and don't know how to go about it, I have just completed a replacement of 8 drives with minimal downtime for the family consuming that data. Here's how I did it:


    Original Setup:

    • OMV 5.x (on a separate SSD) - this will not be touched
    • 2x WD Red 8 TB drives (Parity)
    • 6x WD Red 8 TB drives (Data)
    • SnapRAID/UnionFS

    Target Setup:

    • 2x Seagate Ironwolf Pro 18 TB drives (Parity)
    • 6x Seagate Ironwolf Pro 18 TB drives (Data)
    • SnapRAID/UnionFS

    My NAS is a physical server with an SSD used for the OS and Docker configs only, all data resides on the data drives for my media.


    Procedure:

    • Plug new hard drive into the USB dock and power on (NOTE: Your USB dock needs to actually support the size drive that you are going to. Your drive will not report the correct size if this is not the case, check your USB dock's documentation for how large a drive it supports)
    • Login as root to the server (NOTE: If you don't login as root, any commands from here on out will need "sudo" before them.)
    • Run: snapraid diff (if there are any differences, then run: snapraid sync).
    • Repeat the above step until there are no differences
    • Run: lsblk -o NAME,PATH,FSTYPE,MOUNTPOINT,LABEL,UUID,SIZE and note the drive that doesn’t have a partition. Also note the sdX of the drive that is being replaced and the mountpoint for the source drive
    • Run: fdisk /dev/sdX (where X is the letter of the new drive without a partition)
    • Type:
      • g to create GPT partition
      • n (ENTER – for new partition)
      • Partition Number (hit ENTER)
      • First Sector (hit ENTER)
      • Last Sector (hit ENTER),
      • p (ENTER – for primary partition)
      • w to write to disk
    • Format the drive with: mkfs.ext4 -L <NEWDRIVENAME> /dev/sdX1 (where <NEWDRIVENAME> is the label of the drive and X is the drive letter from above)
    • Create a mount directory: mkdir /mnt/sdX (where X is the drive letter of the new drive)
    • Run: mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt/sdX (to mount the NEW drive where X is the drive letter of the new drive)
    • IMPORTANT: Make sure that nothing is writing to the drives (stop all containers/apps)
    • Run: rsync -av --progress <SOURCE_MOUNTPOINT>/ /mnt/sdX (where X is the drive letter of the new drive and SOURCE_MOUNTPOINT is the mount of the original drive you found in the lsblk command above)
    • Login to the OMV UI and go to the SnapRAID section
    • Find the old drive in the Drives tab and remove it from the array (NOTE: Write down the label of drive you are removing you will need this for a step later). Apply the changes to OMV.
    • If it's a data drive, move to the Union Filesystems section and deselect the drive to take it out of the file system, save and apply.
    • Shutdown the server and swap out the drives. Boot server back up.
    • Open SSH session and the OMW gui
    • Go to File Systems and mount the new drive, apply config. Remove the old drive, apply config.
      • If it's a data drive, go to Union Filesystems, add the new drive to the list, save and apply changes
    • Go to SnapRAID, then DRIVES, select the new drive to add to the array. Apply changes. (NOTE: For data drives, tick the CONTENT and DATA, for parity drives only choose the PARITY toggle)
    • IMPORTANT: Change the label of the new drive in SnapRAID to match the OLD label you noted above (in RED). Apply changes
    • Go into S.M.A.R.T. section and enable monitoring onnew drive.
    • Reboot the system
    • IMPORTANT: Make sure that nothing is writing to the drives (stop all containers/apps)
    • In SSH session, run: "snapraid diff" and "snapraid sync"
    • Go into OMV UI and change the SnapRAID label for the new drive to whatever new you want. Apply.
    • Run: "snapraid diff" and "snapraid sync" one final time

    I hope this helps someone who is doing this the first time (like I was), but this method ensures there is no data lost and no corruption. If you use Plex Server like I do for watching your media, you can keep Plex as the only container running as it just reads and doesn't write to the data drives. The only downtime I had was when I had to swap the drives (since my case wasn't hot swappable), so the impacted time was minimal. The rsync command in my case took about 14 hrs. On average, its about 2 hrs per TB of data copied, so use that as the baseline to know how long it will take for each copy. I started the command before bed and let it run all night, that ate up a lot of the time.


    I'm also attaching these steps as an attachment for the doc I created that I worked off of.

  • New hard drive not showing correct size

    Had one more question, when doing a drive copy from the old smaller drive to the newer larger drive, do you recommend dd or rsync? It seems there's only one file in each drive which is the Snapraid file, so wasn't sure which was better to use, either way its a long copy just trying to minimize the downtime.

  • Upgrading my NAS completely

    Quote from MacLeod

    hi
    For me clearly it's preferable to copy from external USB to your env you've prepared and going step by step...
    Only if you have saves and permit you to "play" or "try", in my side I prefer always to secure.
    Of course it will take time ;)
    Remember that RAID will never replace saves...

    Thanks for the input. Do you know if there an ETA for OMV 7.x golive? Is there an upgrade path from 5 - 7?

  • New hard drive not showing correct size

    I've had this dock for ages, so maybe its the dock. Just ordered a new one from Amazon that will be here tomorrow. I will report back if it reports any different size (the one I am getting supports up to 22 TB drives so it should report correctly).

  • New hard drive not showing correct size

    Quote from MacLeod

    Mmmm I've heard about USB STA dock limitations !!! Take care ... I'm pretty sure it's your case...
    https://www.reddit.com/r/DataH…_max_disk_size_in_a_sata/


    Else other possibilities (i don't think it will resolve)
    - have you the same result for another format filesystem type for this disk ? (NTFS for exemple)
    - Can you check with lshw ?

    - Stupid question : do you have enabled quota? ;)

    Thank you for response. If I can't use the dock to copy files to and from the current drives, how would I go about the copy? My Sata ports on my motherboard and maxed and my motherboard doesn't have an e-Sata port.


    I have never enabled quota unless it gets enabled by default with the OMV install.


    This is what lshw reports for the drive:


  • Upgrading my NAS completely

    I have been running OMV 5.x on my NAS for a long while now and it's been amazing. The current specs of my NAS as it pertains to OMV are as follows:


    Parity: 2 x 8TB WD Red

    Data: 6 x 8 TB WD Red

    OS: 256gb SSD

    Raid: SnapRAID with MergeFS


    I just got 8 x 18 TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro drives and want to replace all 8 drives above with these. In addition, I was curious if I should also go the route of upgrading OMV to 7.x now or wait until it is out of RC state and goes gold?


    As far as updating the hard drives, I know the best path forward is to copy all data from each drive to the new target drive then replace it in the chassis, reconfigure SnapRAID to see the new drive, etc. What I was wondering is for the 2 parity drives, instead of copying the data could I just take them both out and replace them with the 2 new drives and have the parity recreate on them from the data drives? I realize this is a very noob question, I know enough just to get myself in trouble, that's why I wanted to ask my questions here before doing anything on the server since its running very well right now.


    Happy for any thoughts on how I should go about all these upgrades (I am by no means a Debian expert either so I will do my best to understand any information shared).


    One last thing, if anyone has any ideas about what is happening, I did try and set one of the new drives up in a USB Sata Dock to start copying one of the drives to it, but the OS shows only 380GB of the 18TB of the drive when running lsblk, and I have no idea how to get it to see all the space. Any thoughts are welcome. Original forum post here: RE: New hard drive not showing correct size

  • New hard drive not showing correct size

    I am upgrading all the drives in my OMV server and I have an external USB dock with one of the new drives in it. However when I run lsblk it shows the size being 380GB when in reality the drive is 18TB. How do I get it to report the correct size so I can copy the data from the old drive to the new?


    Using: OMV 5

  • AMD vs Intel for 50TB NAS build

    Well I got it working finally. I think I was correct in my original assumption (partially) that there was a screw mount on the case that was probably shorting the board. (One didn't line up where it should have). The second thing was I think what @cadre mentioned about overtightening the CPU. I removed everything, reseated it all and voila it posted! :)


    So now my question is this, I can see all 8 drives in OMV now, all formatted, here are my questions:


    • What file system should each drive be to maximize the setup with UnionFS?
    • Best policy to use in UnionFS for mount options?

    Also, is there anything else I should know for best practice settings for SnapRAID and UnionFS? I want to make sure I get this right from the start :)

  • AMD vs Intel for 50TB NAS build

    Yeah I did that's how I found that RAM. I really think I missed a screw post on the MB somewhere, it feels like it's shorting out because of that. I will report back when I have time to gut and test individually.

  • AMD vs Intel for 50TB NAS build

    Quote from gderf

    Verify that the RAM you have installed meets all requirements - correct number of sticks, installed in correct slots.

    This is what I have:


    MB: SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SRL-F Server Motherboard LGA 2011 R3
    CPU: Intel Xeon E5-1650 V3 Haswell-EP 3.5 GHz 6 x 256 KB L2 Cache 15MB L3 Cache LGA 2011-3 140W Server Processor BX80644E51650V3
    RAM: HYNIX HMA41GR7MFR4N-TF Hynix DDR4-2133 8GB1Gx4 ECCREG CL15 Samsung Chip Server Memory (x4)


    I made sure, initially, that all the RAM sticks were loaded in the blue slots as the manual said, then I removed all but one stick, and it was still doing the same thing. SO I am at a loss. I am guessing maybe a screw post on the case somewhere shorting out the board. I won't really know until I gut it, keep the motherboard by itself with one stick and see what happens. Does the configuration above look correct?

  • AMD vs Intel for 50TB NAS build

    I just put everything together last night, powered the system on this morning and it powers up the fans for about 3 seconds, then shuts down, then does it all again. Any ideas? I tried a different power supply, that wasn't it. I left just one stick of RAM in, that didn't do it either. Thoughts? I would hate to have to dismantle everything and start over :(

  • AMD vs Intel for 50TB NAS build

    I did settle on a power supply @jollyrogr thanks for weighing in though :)


    I finally have all the parts in house and ready to start putting it together. Now I have the question about how to partition these drives. So there are 8 drives, all 8 TB each, I was initially thinking saving 2 drives as parity to be able to withstand 2 drives failing, but not sure if that is overkill? Thoughts? Also I watched some videos a while back from TechnoDadLife about using UnionFS/SnapRAID but this was a while back with OMV 4.x. I have seen talk about MergeFS as well, just want to make sure I have the right focus initially when setting this up, want to get it right the first time :)


    As always, opinions are appreciated.

  • AMD vs Intel for 50TB NAS build

    Quote from ryecoaaron

    I would go with OMV 5.x.

    Same as OMV 4.x. Just install updates from the Updates tab.

    You are a gentleman and a scholar! Thank you so much! I'm sure I will be back on the forums, but probably with questions related to OMV instead of hardware, can't wait to get this monster up and running, so much possibility! :)

  • AMD vs Intel for 50TB NAS build

    Quote from ryecoaaron

    That would probably a good choice.

    Awesome thanks so much for all the advice (across the entire thread). One extra question concerning OMV itself, I will probably be building this system completely within the next month or 2, is OMV 5.x the way to go right now, or is there a reason I should stick with OMV 4.x? I am trying not to have to redo work in the coming months so would prefer to be on the latest and greatest if your opinion is it is stable enough. And what is the upgrade procedure for OMV 5.x when updates are released? Is it just a few clicks in the GUI to update? Command line updates? Full rebuild with a new build version?