Questions regarding Storage Upgrade

[A Former User]

The current FOG Server I have setup is starting to run out of space.

I currently have a 1TB drive that hosts the Ubuntu OS and the FOG Images are stored on. I have purchased a new 8TB NAS HDD that i would like to use as a secondary storage to host all of the new images I create from this point on. Is it possible to do this? If so, what would I need to configure to where the new images point to the secondary drive for uploading/deploying? Could images be pulled from 2 different locations (ex. HDD1 or HDD2)? Or would it be best to just reinstall FOG on the 8TB drive, that way everything points to only one location? Sorry if this is a little lengthy but this is the first time I’ve come across this issue. Thanks.

[george1421]

There are a couple of way to go about this neither is perfectly clean.

I guess the first question to ask is if your can install 2 hard drives in your FOG server at one time?

If yes then you have options (not in any special order).

1. If your FOG server uses LVM disk management, you can just add the new 8TB disk to the existing root LVM volume. Let the OS manage the disk space.

2. Map the new drive to the existing FOG server and mount over the /images directory: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/6642/moving-fog-s-images-files-off-the-root-partition

3. Setup the FOG server as a second storage node (basically map back to the FOG server where the 8TB drive is mounted). You will need to use the location plugin do decide which image goes to which (logical) storage node.

4. Clone your 1TB drive to your 8TB drive.

What ever solution, my preference is to not have the /images directory a member of the linux root partition. Filling up the root partition on linux is never a good thing. If the images are stored on the root partition its possible if the disk is not checked before the upload you could fill the root partition and bring down the linux OS. (I’ve been there and done that a few times).

[A Former User]

Thank you for posting this information. After reading what you posted, I am going to try cloning the 1TB and then move that cloned image to the 8TB, letting it be the only drive in the system. This should in theory allow me to keep everything that was on the 1TB and the new drive will have plenty of space. Hopefully no issues will arise, I’ve never done a linux clone before but I’ve read using dd commands you can use this method to clone the image.

[george1421]

@Blsmith If this is a physical server, look at another FOSS utility called clonezilla. I can’t say if it speaks with LVM, but with standard partitions you should be able to resize them with clonezilla. Don’t mess with dd unless you really have a desire to do it the hard way.

[Wayne Workman]

@george1421 said in Questions regarding Storage Upgrade:

Don’t mess with dd unless you really have a desire to do it the hard way.

The very, very hard way.

[A Former User]

@Wayne-Workman Okay thanks to you and george1421. I will be trying clonezilla out this morning and will post the results. I appreciate you guys assistance.

[Jaymes Driver]

@Blsmith I just used clonezilla to clone a FOG installation yesterday! You shouldn’t have any issues.

LVM should be supported by clonezilla, even if it is multipathd.

Let us know how it goes.

[A Former User]

@Jaymes-Driver Clonezilla worked perfectly, I had no problem with the the clone. However, since the drive was clone, it shows the 1TB partition that was one the original disk, however I cannot allocate the other 7TB’s in ext4 using gparted live; every time I do this, I get an error when I try to activate the unallocated 6TB’s (don’t know if this is an issue where the drive is set at MBR and limited to 2TB’s but I should be able to allocate the remaining 6TB’s since that is separated from the OS partition). So what I might now try if its possible is to leave the original 1TB and set the 8TB as the new source of where images are will be created and stored so I can have all new images deployed/captured to the 8TB instead of going to the 1TB. Will this be able to work? Sorry, this is my first time dealing with this storage issue. Thanks.

[Tom Elliott]

@Blsmith this is a limitation of an MBR layout.

You will need to convert the disk to GPT inorder to use the full 7-8tb of space.

[Tom Elliott]

MBR can have 4 primary partitions.

Each partition in 512 byte sectors can have a max of 2 TB.

Each partition in 4096 byte sectors can have 4tb…Kind of

[A Former User]

@Tom-Elliott If I convert the disk to GPT (which wipes over the clone). After I clone the drive again (after converting disk to GPT) I will need to segment the drive in 4TB partitions (excluding OS partition). Since there will be several partitions (ex. (2) 4TB partitions) how will this need to be setup up in FOG regarding images moved across several partitions?