More disk space

I got around to installing the 16TB drives in the Chia storage server. The 4 x 8TB drives that were in the storage server were swapped out. I had 3 pools originally as:

pool1 - 5 x 16TB drives in raidz
pool2 - 4 x 8TB drives in raidz
pool3 - 4 x 8TB drives in raidz

It took about 3 days to move the files off pool3 onto another server and then copy them back. I also spent a day moving a lot of files to pool3 to free up space on pool1. This is what we have now:

pool1 - 5 x 16TB drives in raidz
pool2 - 4 x 8TB drives in raidz
pool3 - 5 x 16TB drives in raidz

NAME    SIZE  ALLOC   FREE  CKPOINT  EXPANDSZ   FRAG    CAP  DEDUP    HEALTH  ALTROOT
pool1  72.8T  5.38T  67.4T        -         -     0%     7%  1.00x    ONLINE  -
pool2  29.1T  26.3T  2.82T        -         -     0%    90%  1.00x    ONLINE  -
pool3  72.8T  65.5T  7.25T        -         -     0%    90%  1.00x    ONLINE  -

That is a theoretical 174TB now. I say theoretical because this is before allowing for drive redundancy (one drive per pool). This is what it looks looks like inside the storage server.

The pool3 drives are the ones with the white 16TB stickers. The drives below are pool1 and pool2 is an external disk enclosure. As you can see quite a tangled mess of SATA power and data cables. You can also see the 2TB SATA SSD's used as the ZIL or intent log.

My original intention was to have a pool of 10 drives with raidz2 (two drive redundancy), but I didn't have enough space on the other server to move all the files, so I went for the simpler option of making another pool3.

I wouldn't make another server like this again, its much simpler to buy a 2U rack mount server with 12 drive bays where all the cabling and power is done for you. A bigger alternative would be a 4U rack mount with 24 drive bays, but I don't have a rack.

I'm now plotting so that I can fill up pool1 at which point my expansion options are rather limited. I can get bigger drives and put them into the external disk enclosure, but its limited by its 5MB/sec USB speed and built-in USB hub. I was looking to get another external disk enclosure but the model I have is discontinued and the newer ones suffer from insufficient air flow.

I currently have 765 plots taking 75TB according to the Chia GUI. Pool3 has 529 plots which means I can do another 485 or so before I run out of disk space again.


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