Hi again,
maybe I am missing something here? But in some way I got it solved.
May I have other opinions on that please.
Not with xfs, but with zfs. Maybe there is a way with xfs as well? Or some other fs, not sure.
Here is what I did.
VM with 2 vdisks. one small one for array, one desired size for data. For testing I used 32GB and 100GB.
Install ZFS Master Plugin.
Added a small disk to VM, and added this to the array. (XFS) (the array drive seems necessary, since otherwise we cannot start the pool.)
Added a pool under Pool Device with 1 disk. Added the bigger vdisk to the pool. Format with ZFS. Added datasets to it (dataset don't seem to be necessary)
Test ZFS Pool over smb.
Increase vdisk size in proxmox. (I added 50GB, and later as second test another 50GB repeating all the steps increasing to 200GB)
From there I basically increased zfs size by increasing the disk size first and then the zfs pool itself. These steps required the Linux console.
The result was a zfs pool first 150GB, then 200GB in size. data still on the drive.
I would know of no reason why this should not work on ESXi or other similar platform.
If I got this correct, the array goes through unraids logic. (there is some unraid driver loaded, which I think is doing the magic). All new or changed drives need to be formatted. (If I am not mistaken, the unraid driver checks through a DB or file and knows the drives? Maybe some information saved on the drive itself? But basically it prevents the user from having unraid mount that drive without format)
the pool devices don't go through unraid logic and get "mounted". (and disk changes are not detected and forcing you to format the drive) Which, if I am correct, results that no parity drive can be used for the pool? Fine for my setup. Maybe other unraid features missing?
What do other people think about this method? I saw some other threads here (unanswered) by people asking for the same thing on virtual host.
Are Pool Devices intended for the usage of data? Or like only for cache?
Am I correct that without an array disk there is no way to start the array and therefor also not able to start the pool device?
Am I missing somthing here?
Regards