If you have recently created a server that has multiple disks, you may need a reliable file system that can fully utilize all of your Hard Drives and make the most of your storage. I recently had this issue as I recently upgraded some of my hardware and decided to put gently-used gaming PC parts into a server chassis. This chassis, or rack-mount PC case, has enough bays to add nine 3.5 inch hard drives (currently I only have four) and perfectly suits my needs.
After setting everything up, I realized I know very little about setting up file system software. This server has an nvme boot drive straight into the motherboard, and four 3.5 inch, 6TB drives connected via SATA. Booting up, I installed Ubuntu 22.04 straight to the nvme, and left the drives unallocated.
Initially I looked around for how to install different file systems, because I wanted to allocate a storage pool using all of my drives, and I ended up settling on ZFS. Based off of my very quick peek at the setup instructions, I was immediately sold. Super easy to install and the utility is wonderful.
- Easy to setup
- Options to Mirror storage
- Data integrity verification
- Simple restoration options
- Copy-on-write to prevent data loss
Instructions to install and run ZFS are below:
(Instructions will vary based on the name of your disks)
Install the ZFS utility with the following command:
sudo apt install zfsutils-linux
Verify the disks you want to add to the pool:
lsblk
Add the disks to a storage pool called ‘Media_Pool’:
sudo zpool create Media_Pool /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd
To add to a MIRRORED storage pool run the following:
sudo zpool create Media_Pool mirror /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd
To verify that the ZFS Pool as created and is functional run the following:
sudo zpool status
To REMOVE the storage pool you can run the following:
sudo zpool destroy Media_Pool
In short: ZFS is a powerful file system that allows for the addition of disks and the easy setup of multiple disks into a single storage pool.
Give it a try, and hopefully this tutorial has been helpful and feel free to reach out if you have any questions about setup.
Stay curious and continue to learn and grow.
Greyson's Tech Blog 