ZFS resize disk vdev

Nick Gustas freebsd-fs at tychl.net
Tue Dec 9 08:41:55 PST 2008


Bryan Alves wrote:
> I'm thinking about using a hardware raid array with ZFS, using a single disk
> vdev zpool.  I want the ability to add/remove disks to an array, and I'm
> still unsure of the stability of zfs as a whole.  I'm looking for an easy
> way to resize and manage disks that are greater than 2 terabytes.
>
> If I have a single block device, /dev/da0, on my system that is represented
> by a zfs disk vdev, and the size of this block device grows (because the
> underlying hardware raid expands), will zfs correctly expand?  And will it
> correctly expand in place?
>   


If you have ZFS on the raw da0 and not on partition, it will expand with 
a zpool export/import or a reboot after the hardware is done expanding 
the array. If you put ZFS on a partition, you'll first need to extend 
the partition after the expansion finishes.

I have a friend running ZFS on a 24 port 3ware controller that has 
expanded his system from a 4 disk raid-5 to a 17 disk raid-6, 1 to 2 
disks at a time. Obviously he's well past 2TB at this point. Performance 
isn't as good as it would be natively, but it's faster than needed and 
the only option at the moment. No troubles yet other than a disk failure 
or two, the system has been in use since Sep 2007.

 > zpool status
  pool: threeware
 state: ONLINE
 scrub: none requested
config:

        NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        threeware   ONLINE       0     0     0
          da0       ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors





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