Setting up a RAID-Z2 - amount of HDDs / initially supported

[Sese-Schneider]

Hi all! Already exited to try out HexOS!

I want to use HexOS with a RAID-Z2 pool (double disk parity).
I have two questions:

1. Does HexOS allow me to configure RAID-Z2 on the initial setup? All the videos I saw used RAID-Z1.
2. What is the minimum amount of HDDs required for HexOS to use RAID-Z2 in the setup process?

Thanks!

[Jocumbus]

I think I heard in the LTT announcement video that Raid z2 is automatically selected during installation for five or more drives. However, during the installation there is also the option of configuring the respective pools manually. 

 

[Sese-Schneider]

@Jocumbus that's also where I got that information from, but watching other Videos it doesn't seem like its actually doing it.
Configuring the pools manually doesn't seem to be supported right now as well.
 

 

[Jocumbus]

@Sese-Schneider oh, what a shame. I didn't use it in my setup, but I was hoping that at least some of the manual configuration options would already be usable.

[Master-spud]

Yeah that's a big one for me since kind of locked into which you choose, planning on a Dell R730xd with 12 3.5" drives, so a single parity drive is kinda rough.

[Mobius]

You can try making a z2 pool in truenas ui but it is possible things like one click apps will break if you do like it does for mixed size pools

[Phil.blog]

I just installed and started setup. Same position.

I have 5 drives and it's forcing Raid 5, which no option for manual configuration. 

[Mobius]

6 hours ago, Phil.blog said:

I just installed and started setup. Same position.

I have 5 drives and it's forcing Raid 5, which no option for manual configuration. 

you have to go into truenas ui for manual configuration but not all pools will play nice with hexos even after being created in truenas. 

[DocJekl]

This is a real bummer, because I have 6x 14 TB Seagate Exos NAS drives, and wanted 2-disk redundancy with all drives installed.

But now I'll have to disconnect a drive to use 5 drives with 1-disk redundancy, and leave me with a spare 14TB disk sitting there to serve as a replacement in case of a failure.

QUESTION:  Will I be able to later add the 6th disk and have 2-disk redundancy, or will I have to wipe and recreate a new storage pool when RAID-Z2 becomes available?

[PsychoWards]

33 minutes ago, DocJekl said:

QUESTION:  Will I be able to later add the 6th disk and have 2-disk redundancy, or will I have to wipe and recreate a new storage pool when RAID-Z2 becomes available?

No, you cannot change from a RaidZ1 to a RaidZ2, this is defined once during the creation of the pool, but changing it requires to destroy and recreate the pool with RaidZ2, which will wipe all the data from the disks.

 

If you want to have a RaidZ2 you either need to wait until Hexos supports it or create it manually in truenas and live with possible side effects in Hexos or ditch Hexos for the time being and switch to a truenas installation and migrate back to Hexos once pool migration because available some time after version 1.0.