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1U Server, swapping disks one by one capacity?

A

appliedautomation

Well-known member
Authorized Kaleidescape Dealer
Hi,
We have a server with 3x 750GB disks, giving 1.5TB of storage.

If we wanted to change all the disks one by one to 4TB over time what would the storage capacity be after each disk swap?

I know when we add the first 4TB to slot 4 of the server there will be 2.25TB of space.

Thanks.
 
KRAID will always keep in reserve the size of the largest drive in the system, including that first 4TB. But as you point out, it does free up the 750GB currently allocated to KRAID because you have an empty slot in the 1U. Buy swapping out the remaining 750's with 4TB's you gain the difference with each replacement, 3.25TB gain (4TB - 750GB). (Of course each of these replacement 4TB's provides 4TB of content storage, after the first 4TB is installed.)



Jim
 
Last edited:
cinelife said:
Adding that first 4TB will not result in any increased capacity. That's because the KRAID will always keep in reserve the size of the largest drive in the system, including that first 4TB. Buy swapping out the remaining 750's with 4TB's you gain the difference with each replacement, 3.25TB gain (4TB - 750GB).



Jim
Click to expand...

If the system reserves the largest drive, the 4TB, then the 3rd 750gb will be released as storage, increasing the current 1.5tb to 2.25tb, no?

KS support told me that putting the first 4tb in there would have the same effect as adding another 750gb. (4x 750gb)
 
appliedautomation said:
If the system reserves the largest drive, the 4TB, then the 3rd 750gb will be released as storage, increasing the current 1.5tb to 2.25tb, no?

KS support told me that putting the first 4tb in there would have the same effect as adding another 750gb. (4x 750gb)
Click to expand...


That's correct. I modified my original answer to make that more clear. You do gain that that 750GB because you started with 3 drives and are placing the 4TB in an empty slot. I'd forgotten your 1U was not full.


Jim
 
Thanks for clearing that up Jim.

It was when the 750's were swapped out I was unsure about.

So the usable space should go something like this....

3x .75tb = 1.5tb
3x .75tb + 1x 4tb = 2.25tb
2x .75tb + 2x 4tb = 5.5tb
1x .75tb + 3x 4tb = 8.75
4x 4tb = 12tb
 
Yes, your plan is correct, that's what you should get as you upgrade each drive.



Jim
 
Say one drive was swapped out each month and new films were imported each month, after all are swapped what would happen if the three 750's were put into another server by them selves as a set?

The data would be completely different on each disk, so would it show as empty or just get really confused and not boot?
 
If you are planning on doing this and have the drives already, I would not populate the 4th bay yet. The first drive you put in will be larger than your other drives, so it would force all the parity data to be read from the parity drive and migrate to the new drive, effectively taking the time of a full rebuild to complete that action (roughly a day). Then each of the next 3 drive swaps take the same time. You would have run the equivalent of 4 rebuilds. If you swap the drives out with just 3 drives in the system, it will take less time to do it and be gentler on the drives.

While you have RAID for protection, remember than when you purposely fail a drive to replace it, you have left yourself vulnerable. If a drive goes down during that rebuild, you lose data. Also, the rebuild process is intensive so you want to minimize the number of times you run them on older drives.

Also, swapping out one drive at a time will create a bunch of drives from an array with different time stamps and data on them and would not be a "set" that could be put into another server unless they were invalidated and then had an O/S put on them. Given their size, they are out of warranty and won't be eligible for that service.
 
Provided you place ALL the disks from an existing disk set (all disks in the Server) into a completely empty Server, then it should all work without any problems. They key is always keeping the full set of disks together and being sure they are only placed in an empty Server. For example, if you only have those 3 750GB disks, they can be placed in either a an empty 1U or an empty 3U, but if a 3U is elected, you will not have a Hot Spare until you add another blank disk (750GB or larger).



Jim
 
Thanks guys, maybe easier then to start with two 4tb's and import my content again. That way the three 750s can be removed and kept as a set in the cupboard, Might find an empty chassis one day. Plus there's nothing to rebuild.
 
Or if you know somebody with a 1U server, you could borrow it to do a replication onto the new drives. With your existing system, it would only take 2 days to replicate it.
 
cinelife said:
Provided you place ALL the disks from an existing disk set (all disks in the Server) into a completely empty Server, then it should all work without any problems. They key is always keeping the full set of disks together and being sure they are only placed in an empty Server. For example, if you only have those 3 750GB disks, they can be placed in either a an empty 1U or an empty 3U, but if a 3U is elected, you will not have a Hot Spare until you add another blank disk (750GB or larger).
Click to expand...

Keep in mind, though that if you do this with the 750s after you replaced them with 4Tb drives (via the "rebuild one disk at a time" method) that these two disk sets will have the same ID. Two different servers running with a duplicate filesystem ID is a "Very Bad Thing(tm)" and will cause both systems to experience various issues. For example, neither system would be able to download content from the store.
 
There's been a change of plan, servers started locking up. Every couple of hours whilst downloading from the store at 50mbps and some times whilst watching DVDs. Support can't see any errors as it's not saving a crash log.

Going to trade up to the 1U 4x 4tb server.
 
Do you run Conductor on a PC anywhere? If so, try shutting it down and try to download again.

John
 
Never mind then. I had a server a while ago that would lock up on downloads when Conductor was running. It was eventuaaly fixed but thought I would mention it just ic case.

John
 
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