Resizing ZFS Pool / AFS Conversion

[Philbert]

Good Morning Guys,

I'm using FreeNAS 11.2 consisting of four (4) Western Digital 8 TB Red Drives - SMB Environment...I would like to create / convert to AFS Environment... Is it possible to release two (2) of the four (4) drives that are currently being used??? Using approximately 4 TB of the 11 TB ZFS pool and want to migrate this data to the new AFS pool...Once this is accomplished, would release the two (2) drives that was previously used in SMB Environment and add them to the AFS ZFS Pool...This is a Home Environment and being used as a centralized File Storage System.. Thanks

 

[colmconn]

Assuming those 4 drives are in a single RAIDZ vdev, then no, you cannot release them from the pool. (You haven't provided enough information to make a definitive adjudication.) Your only choice is to backup up all data on your pool (I'm assuming a single pool with a single vdev consisting of the 4 drives), destroy the pool, rebuild it minus the two drives you want to remove and then restore your data.

 

[Ericloewe]

AFS? What on Earth is that? Do you mean AFP? Because AFP is a veritable zombie that even Apple wants nothing to do with.

And if that is the case, you have a very serious misunderstanding of how storage and sharing work together. There is no such thing as an "SMB pool" or "AFP pool", nor does such a concept make sense. A pool is a pool, and the only thing that matters is the permissions scheme that the protocol needs, which is configured per dataset and can be changed at the cost of redoing permissions on the affected dataset.

 

[Philbert]

Assuming those 4 drives are in a single RAIDZ vdev, then no, you cannot release them from the pool. (You haven't provided enough information to make a definitive adjudication.) Your only choice is to backup up all data on your pool (I'm assuming a single pool with a single vdev consisting of the 4 drives), destroy the pool, rebuild it minus the two drives you want to remove and then restore your data.

Thanks for the quick reply... I researched this last night and couldn’t find the answer/ solution and thought I’d post to the Forum... I was hoping I could create an AFS environment with drives currently in service... I kinda thought that was what going to be the answer but was hoping for something less painful .... The two drive released were going to formatted and used for the AFS environment... Thanks again!

 

[Philbert]

AFS? What on Earth is that? Do you mean AFP? Because AFP is a veritable zombie that even Apple wants nothing to do with.

And if that is the case, you have a very serious misunderstanding of how storage and sharing work together. There is no such thing as an "SMB pool" or "AFP pool", nor does such a concept make sense. A pool is a pool, and the only thing that matters is the permissions scheme that the protocol needs, which is configured per dataset and can be changed at the cost of redoing permissions on the affected dataset.

My mistake - I meant AFP... thanks

 

[danb35]

...but why would you want to (1) use AFP at all, or (2) put it on its own pool?

 

[Philbert]

We have migrated from PC platform to Apple... For some couple of months, having issues with moving unwanted files to Trash... When attempting to delete, will get error indicating file is in-use and actions cannot be done... So I end up using Clean My MAC / File Shreader feature to accomplish this task... Something is definitely not right and I thought that if I moved to the AFP that might resolve these issues...

Thanks

 

[jgreco]

No. You can just disable your old sharing protocol and enable AFP on the existing filesystem and you're instantly converted. You can even leave multiple sharing protocols enabled but this can lead to problems, so don't do that.

AFP is being deprecated by Apple, though. Might be best to avoid.

 

[danb35]

Even granting (which I don't accept, but that's a separate issue) that you want to move to AFP, what makes you think a separate pool is in any way indicated?

 

[Philbert]

Well that’s so much simpler; will give it a ‘try’ and hope for the Best

Thanks

 

[SweetAndLow]

So are you using freenas and zfs already? You just want to share your data using smb now?

 

[jgreco]

So are you using freenas and zfs already? You just want to share your data using smb now?

Did you read the first post?

So the important point to note here is that a lot of newcomers might come to FreeNAS with a sort of traditional view of the world, and not really understanding that the "pool" is literally a pool of space into which you can create multiple datasets, all of which share the pool. So the other option here is just to create a different dataset on the same pool, and put AFP on top of that, but of course then he'd need to move all the files over, so my original suggestion seems better.

 

[jgreco]

AFS? What on Earth is that?

By the way, the Andrew File System is really interesting and it'd be neat for FreeNAS to support it.

 

[Philbert]

Yes - we’ve been using it as Network Share for some time time (2017) as smb... We have migrated from PC to Apple Macs and still are able to access the Shared Data... For a couple of months or so, have experience problems deleting unused files -,get File In-Use and unable to Trash files when all actuality they aren’t... So the thought I had was to convert to AFP and maybe that would resolve the issues we’re experiencing... Maybe what I really should do is ‘nuke’ the drives and start afresh???

 

[Mlovelace]

AFP is being deprecated by Apple, though. Might be best to avoid.

Apple moved away from AFP with the release of Mavericks (2013) iirc so it's not being deprecated, it's been deprecated. ;) @Philip Lashley definitely stick with SMB it has been the default sharing protocol for Mac going on 6 years now, and AFP hasn't received security updates or patches in a long time.

Edit: It was Mavericks, here's a link.

 

[Ericloewe]

By the way, the Andrew File System is really interesting and it'd be neat for FreeNAS to support it.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that one.

 

[jgreco]

Apple moved away from AFP with the release of Mavericks (2013) iirc so it's not being deprecated, it's been deprecated. ;) @Philip Lashley definitely stick with SMB it has been the default sharing protocol for Mac going on 6 years now, and AFP hasn't received security updates or patches in a long time.

Edit: It was Mavericks, here's a link.

Although the netatalk people keep grinding out updates.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/netatalk/files/netatalk/

 

[Mlovelace]

Although the netatalk people keep grinding out updates. :)

https://sourceforge.net/projects/netatalk/files/netatalk/

It's good to see the server side is getting patched, too bad the clients aren't so lucky. I have't been in the Mac world for quite some time now, and Apple seems to be continuing on their appliance, rather than computer, company model; so I don't see myself returning to their ecosystem.