I have a small system that is going to be a file server. It has two disks. I''d like just one pool for data. Is it possible to create two pools on the boot disk, and then add the second disk to the second pool? The result would be a single small pool for root, and a second pool containing the rest of that disk plus the second disk? The installer seems to want to use the whole disk for the root pool. Is there a way to change that? -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
Hi Charles, Works fine. I did just that with my home system. I have 2x .5 TB disks which I didn''t want to dedicate to rpool, and I wanted to create a second pool on those disks which could be expanded. I set up the rpool to be 100GB and that left me with a 400GB partition to make into an extended pool (xpool). There are probably some down-sides to doing this, but I have yet to come across them at this point. The reason I did this is to get around the limitation on rpool which restricts it to being simple mirrors which cannot be added to in a striped configuration. After that was set up I attached 2x 1 TB disks to the extended pool in a mirrored configuration. Check out my blog entry which explains exactly how to do this. The system I used in the demo is inside VirtualBox, but I have real hardware running in the configuration I mention. Using VirtualBox, I worked out the finer bits, before trying it out on my live machine. http://www.kamiogi.net/Kamiogi/Frame_Dragging/Entries/2009/5/10_OpenSolaris_Disk_Partitioning_and_the_Free_Hog.html One really interesting bit is how easily it is to make the disk in a pool bigger by doing a zpool replace on the device. It couldn''t have been any easier with ZFS. I''ve even done a fresh install on this configuration just recently, and other than being exposed for a bit while I broke the mirrors to install a fresh copy of the OS, everything worked out alright. A few snags with namespace collisions when I re-imported the original rpool, but I''d already seen those before and wrote about them in another blog entry. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know. Cheers, Mike Mike --- Michael Sullivan michael.p.sullivan at me.com Japan Mobile: +81-80-3202-2599 US Phone: +1-561-283-2034 On 20 Jun 2009, at 20:44 , Charles Hedrick wrote:> I have a small system that is going to be a file server. It has two > disks. I''d like just one pool for data. Is it possible to create two > pools on the boot disk, and then add the second disk to the second > pool? The result would be a single small pool for root, and a second > pool containing the rest of that disk plus the second disk? > > The installer seems to want to use the whole disk for the root pool. > Is there a way to change that? > -- > This message posted from opensolaris.org > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 7:02 PM, Michael Sullivan<michael.p.sullivan at mac.com> wrote:> One really interesting bit is how easily it is to make the disk in a pool > bigger by doing a zpool replace on the device. ?It couldn''t have been any > easier with ZFS.It''s interesting how you achieved that, although it''d be much easier if the installer supports that from the GUI instead of having to use "zpool replace" as a workaround. I believe using export-import as described in http://www.solarisinternals.com/wiki/index.php/ZFS_Troubleshooting_Guide#ZFS_Root_Pool_Recovery should also work. -- Fajar
Fajar, Yes, you could probably do send/receive from one pool to another, but that would be somewhat more time consuming and you''d have to make sure everything was right in your GRUB menu.lst as well as boot blocks, not to mention the potential for namespace collisions when dealing with a root pool. But this is missing my point. The thing I found more interesting was that a pool could be increased in space by doing a zpool replace with a larger disk. This means if say, you have a pool of 100GB disks and you want to increase the size, you can replace them with bigger disks effectively growing the pool. Not sure how this works out with configurations other than in RAID 0 and RAID 1, but I thought it was a pretty nice feature knowing I can put bigger disks in really easily. I also agree the installer should have an "expert" mode for configuring disks. The "all-or-nothing" approach is easy for people who have never been exposed to Solaris or OpenSolaris, but leaves people out in the cold if you wish to have different configuration for your disks. The Automated Installer, is supposed to give this sort of flexibility, but I haven''t tried it out yet. Regards, Mike --- Michael Sullivan michael.p.sullivan at me.com http://www.kamiogi.net/ Japan Mobile: +81-80-3202-2599 US Phone: +1-561-283-2034 On 22 Jun 2009, at 11:00 , Fajar A. Nugraha wrote:> On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 7:02 PM, Michael > Sullivan<michael.p.sullivan at mac.com> wrote: >> One really interesting bit is how easily it is to make the disk in >> a pool >> bigger by doing a zpool replace on the device. It couldn''t have >> been any >> easier with ZFS. > > It''s interesting how you achieved that, although it''d be much easier > if the installer supports that from the GUI instead of having to use > "zpool replace" as a workaround. I believe using export-import as > described in http://www.solarisinternals.com/wiki/index.php/ZFS_Troubleshooting_Guide#ZFS_Root_Pool_Recovery > should also work. > > -- > Fajar > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss