Hello Andreas 
Thank you very much for you help.  I do have a few more questions.

>> 
>> Therefore 
>> My mkfs options should be 
>> --mkfsoptions="-E stripe=128 -E stride=32" /dev/sdb
> 
> If you are planning on expanding this at the RAID6 level to be an 8+2 
> configuration, you should specify "-E stripe=256,stride=64".  

Are there any potential negatives here?   I initially used a 6 disk raid 10 but 
I ended up with wasted space on the filesystem since I could not fit the 1M 
lustre I/O into the number of active disks cleanly.  Would there be a way to 
minimize the amount of wasted space if I wanted to stick to raid 1/0?  
I assume that aligned I/O is always preferred. 
 

> Note that you cannot specify mulitple separate "-E" options to mke2fs, it 
> would only use the last one specified.

I want to say I tried the mkfs.lustre "-E stripe=xx,stride=xx" but I received 
some error.  I will see if this happens again. 

> 
>> purchase 6 more disks
>> This will allow for a new raid 6 that is aligned the same way with 3 
>> hotspares.
> 
>> or (I need clarification if this understanding is correct)
>> 
>> purchase 10 more disks
>> Expand the current raid 6 to a larger 10 disk/raid 6 with a 4 disk raid 1/0 
>> for a external journal plus a hot spare.  
> 
> Using a 4-disk RAID-10 external journal is unlikely to give you any extra 
> performance, since journal IO is nearly sequential (though sometimes small 
> block writes if there are few clients and you are not using async journal).

I see.  

> 
> Also, 16TB LUN support is only available with ext4, so if you have 2TB drives 
> you need to make sure to download the right ldiskfs package.
> 

I am creating these filesystems with lustre 1.8.3 from the prebuilt RPMs.  Do 
you mean that there is a different ldiskfs package I should use?  

I guess this brings up another question.  
Should i also use the flexible block group options on the OSTs?
-O flex_bg and -G nr_merged_groups

> Depending on the hardware options on your RAID, it may be that you need a 
> separate hot spare for each LUN, in which case having 2 hot spares makes 
> sense.  Otherwise, you can probably use only 13 or 14 drives.
> 
>> Is my understanding of the documentation accurate? 
>> Do both of these options seem like potential upgrade options?
> 
> Either of them seem reasonable.
> 
> If the hardware allows in-place RAID reshaping then it is possible.  I'd 
> always recommend to make a backup before doing this, because one never knows 
> what might happen if this operation is interrupted for some reason.

Understood.  

Thanks Again
Sebastian 
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