[JDSS] Increasing your Pool size

How to increase your Pool size

After you have expanded your storage license (check how to do it here: [JDSS] Expanding license capacity) you may want to expand your Pool size to make use of the new licensed space. You can do it in a few different ways:

1. Add a new vdev to your Pool:

The easiest approach to this problem would be to simply add a new group to your already existing zvol. Go to your Pool options > Disk Groups > Add group:

You will enter a group configuration wizard. There you can configure a new vdev group and accept it by clicking "Add". You can add more than one vdev at a time. Accept your final configuration by clicking "Apply".

Please remember, that the newly added group should be of the same type as the other groups in your storage Pool. Your vdev should consist of disks of the same size and should use exactly the same RAID level as your other vdevs.

It is strongly recommended to build a group of the same size as other storage groups in your Pool.

Reboot is not required for the changes to take place.

2. Replacing disks in existing vdevs

You can also replace the disks in your vdev with new, larger ones, even if you already have data residing on your Pool.

Before proceeding do make a copy of all the data on your Pool.

To replace the disks safely in your Pool, go to your Pool options > Disk Groups:

By clicking the green LED icon under "Blink" you will be able to identify your disk in your server/JBOD. Once you have your disk identified, click the options icon on the right and choose "Detach":

Remember that the number of detached disks before you lose integrity of your data vary depending on the RAID level you are using:

• 2-way mirror - you can replace only 1 disk at a time
• 4-way mirror - you can replace up to 3 disks at a time
• RAID-Z1 - you can replace only 1 disk at a time
• RAID-Z2 - you can replace up to 2 disks at a time
• RAID-Z3 you can replace up to 3 disks at a time

Once the drive is detached you can safely pull it out of your server/JBOD. Connect your new disk to your device and Rescan the storage.

Now you can go back to your group in Disk groups, click on the Options icon, click Attach and choose the disk you have plugged in. A resilver will take place which will synchronize the data present in your RAID group with the newly added disk.

You can track the resilver process in the Pool status window.  Follow this procedure until all disks in your RAID group are replaced.

If you have your new disks already attached to your server/JBOD and do not want to pull your disks out you can use the "Replace" option under the Options icon in your disk group. Simply choose the disk you would like to replace, click the Options icon, choose "Replace" and choose a new disk that you would like to replace the old one with. The replacement process may take some time.

Once all disks in all vdevs are replaced there is one final step to complete the procedure. Go to your Text User Interface, input the Ctrl+Alt+X combination and choose the "Expand pool size after replacing disks to larger-sized":

There you will see a list of all your Pools. Simply choose the Pool you have made changes on and click "Expand the pool":

This also may take some time. Finally you will see a notification about a successful Pool expansion:

Reboot is not required for the changes to take place at any stage of the process.