TrueNAS CORE 13 TrueNAS SCALE 22 file server is a very useful thing. It keeps copies of files for us, uses a great ZFS file system which allows snapshots to protect us from romances, RAID-z makes disk failure a non-critical problem and some more interesting advantages.
BUT just referring to RAID-z. There eventually comes a point when one of our drives runs out, dies, dead. Let's not delude ourselves it will always come eventually. That's when you need to get around to replacing the drive. I will cover how to do it on both TrueNAS CORE and TrueNAS SCALE.
The test environment is two Virtual servers TrueNAS CORE 13.0-U1 and TrueNAS SCALE-22.02.2.1 state is current as of July 2022.
I say this quite accurately because for CORE 13 the U1 version was released on July 5. This means that only now version 13 is recommended for business applications although for larger installations only the U2 version planned for August this year is recommended.
Before we get down to business we need a replacement disk. We need to have a disk no smaller than our broken one. There is nothing to prevent the disk from being larger, but this will not in any way increase our field. Anything larger than the original will just lie unused.
The next thing to know is that admittedly I will be shutting down the virtual servers to swap disks, but this may not be necessary. In my case, I run tests on the XCP-NG virtualizer and disk operations force a reboot.
Both TrueNAS, more specifically ZFS, and most new server boards should easily allow so-called HOT-SWAP, i.e. replacing a disk even without a reboot. You simply pull out the broken disk and insert a new one without rebooting the server, without service interruption. Cool no?
I invite you to watch the video