Preparing to upgrade Parity

[Danilo_Thann69]

I'm currently running one 4TB drive as parity.

 

I've just purchased two 8TB Ironwolf drives, that I want to upgrade the existing 4TB Parity, and add the other 8TB as a second parity.

 

Does anyone have suggestions on the best way to do this?

 

I've just gotten my two Ironwolf drives in today, and will be putting them in to start preclearing them.

 

Thanks

Danilo

[JorgeB]

I would use option 1 or 2 (after testing the new disks with preclear or another tool) according to server usage:

 

1) server can be left unused during upgrade: upgrade parity and add parity2 at the same time, keep old parity intact in case something goes wrong.

 

2) server will be used and there can be new writes: add parity2 first, when done upgrade parity, server will always be protected.

[JorgeB]

If you plan to use the old parity as data drive trurl just reminded me of this method:

 

And, when replacing a parity drive and adding the old parity as a new data disk, you don't really need to clear the old parity/new data disk. You can just follow bjp999's method.

[interwebtech]

I took the linear slow route

 

1) swap existing parity with new 8TB drive, run parity rebuild.

2) add new parity2 drive and run parity rebuild.

3) add old parity drive as data drive and (you guessed it) run parity rebuild

 

On my system, it takes 25 hours to run an 8TB parity check/rebuild, so it is a 3+ day operation. But you are protected and your files are available the whole time.

[JonathanM]

1) swap existing parity with new 8TB drive, run parity rebuild.

 

But you are protected and your files are available the whole time.

If you don't already have a second parity drive in place, you are not protected from a failure while rebuilding parity1.

[Danilo_Thann69]

Thanks guys.  I've just mounted the two 8TB drives, and have one of them pre-clearing right now.

 

Forgot I had picked up a pair of 250GB SSD's I was going to add in as cache drives (had to pickup power cables and forgot), so I have one of those pre-clearing now as well

 

So I've got a fun week.

 

My intention is to go ahead and replace the 4TB Current Parity drive with the two 8TB drives.

 

I currently have a 500GB WD Blue drive as a cache, and was planning on adding these SSD's as a cache pool but realized the existing drive is formatted reiserfs.  So I'll have to do some playing around with the cache drives as well lol.

 

I'll have to look, I would love to set the cache drives up so that the two SSD's are the primary cache drives, and use the 500GB as storage for Dockers/etc

[trurl]

I currently have a 500GB WD Blue drive as a cache, and was planning on adding these SSD's as a cache pool but realized the existing drive is formatted reiserfs.  So I'll have to do some playing around with the cache drives as well lol.

 

I'll have to look, I would love to set the cache drives up so that the two SSD's are the primary cache drives, and use the 500GB as storage for Dockers/etc

See the V6 FAQ stickied at the top of this subforum for how to replace your cache while preserving its contents. Ask if you have questions.

[Danilo_Thann69]

Well, got an email from my raid this morning saying the pre-clearing has completed (Started Wen night) on the two 250GB SSD's for the Cache and the two new 8TB Ironwolf drives that will becoming my parity drives.

 

In preparation, I've disabled cache drive access on all of my shares. So the existing cache drive, right now, only has Docker Appdata folder on it.

 

Guess my first thing tonight will be disable dockers and move that data off the current cache drive.

Unassign the current cache drive from the system.

Assign the 2 SSD and the old cache drive back, as cache drives and format them all so they can be a cache pool.

 

Then work on the parity, I think I'm going to use johnnie's suggestion #2. 

 

Add the 2nd parity drive, and rebuild parity. Then remove the old 4TB and replace it with the other 8TB. 

 

This should keep parity secure during the update.

[JonathanM]

Guess my first thing tonight will be disable dockers and move that data off the current cache drive.

Depending on what dockers you have, that could be problematic. If it were me, I'd use Squid's appdata backup, that way all the permissions and stuff would be handled correctly.

[RobJ]

3) add old parity drive as data drive and (you guessed it) run parity rebuild

 

Just one correction, there's no parity rebuild here, just a clearing of the old drive, then quick format.

[JorgeB]

Guess my first thing tonight will be disable dockers and move that data off the current cache drive.

Depending on what dockers you have, that could be problematic. If it were me, I'd use Squid's appdata backup, that way all the permissions and stuff would be handled correctly.

 

Agree, that or use the replace cache procedure on the FAQ, or else there could be permission issues.

[Danilo_Thann69]

Thanks for the suggestion of using CA backup.

 

I've backed up the 5 dockers I have running, and have created the cache pool and am currently restoring my appdata to get the dockers back online.

 

I have also added the new Parity 2 drive, and am doing a Parity Sync to get the new drive up to speed. 

Being an 8TB I assume it's going to take the better part of a day.

 

Once that's done, I'll remove the 4TB parity drive and "replace" it with the other 8TB and do a parity sync again.  Then I just need to add the old 4TB parity drive in as a data drive.