8.0.4 -> 8.20, what is involved?

[drjenk]

Hi,
I've just set up my hardware, installed 8.04, and am getting myself familiar with FreeNAS. I'm going to buy more disks and set up my volumes etc. I noticed 8.20 is in beta now, and has a plug in feature I'd like to use (uPNP). If I set up my drives now using RaidZ2 in 8.0.4, what is the procedure on upgrading to 8.2 later? Is it relatively risk free? Or is there any reason I should wait until 8.2 is released?

Thanks
David J.

 

[William Grzybowski]

The upgrade path should be painless, a simple upgrade of the new image using the WebGUI should do just fine, there is no reason to wait for 8.2.

Cheers

 

[joeschmuck]

As a note of caution... If you are just building up your NAS, do not put a ton of data on your device right away as during the process of trying to get things right there is a chance you will want to change some hard drive configuration, reformat it, whatever. If you don't have a lot of data on it then it's easier to restore later. Also, plug-ins are new here and people are having problems implementing them.

 

[unca_NAS]

I also am taking my first steps with freeNAS and tempted to upgrade to version 8.2.0
If I choose to upgrade, can the backup of my configuration-file from version 8.0.4 be used with 8.2.0...
or do I have to start configuring the NAS from scratch?

 

[survive]

Hi unca_NAS,

Going from 8.0.4 to 8.2 should be just like any other upgrade. Be sure you backup your config to insure things go smoothly & so you have it if you want to go back to 8.0.4.

joeschmuck has good advice as well...build your NAS and mess with it some before you start moving over data. You just might decide that you want to add a few more drives or change the raidz-level after you live with it a little while.

-Will

 

[joeschmuck]

Just to amplify on what survive said, well with my own spin on it...

1) If you upgrade via the GUI then you don't need to restore your configuration file as it will be applied automatically. I think upgrading from the iso does the same but I haven't done that operation in a very long time so I can't say it for sure.

2) Once you have done the upgrade, I recommend you create a new configuration file specifically for 8.2.0-BETA2 and retain your old 8.0.4 version in case you desire to move backwards form some reason. I'm making an assumption here that the 8.2.0 configuration file is different from 8.0.4.

Hope that helps.

 

[survive]

Hi unca_NAS,

Just to clarify what joeschmuck & myself said...you should be able to upload\restore an old config file onto a newer version of FreeNAS, but newer versions of FreeNAS may have added entries in the config database that an older version doesn't understand which can cause it not to be loaded.

-Will

 

[drjenk]

As a note of caution... If you are just building up your NAS, do not put a ton of data on your device right away as during the process of trying to get things right there is a chance you will want to change some hard drive configuration, reformat it, whatever. If you don't have a lot of data on it then it's easier to restore later. Also, plug-ins are new here and people are having problems implementing them.

Yes exactly, that is my plan. I got every other piece of hardware and have it powered up, with a few disks in raidz1 just so I can test the stability of my new hardware for a while, at least a month. I copied some dummy redundant data on it, went through the sharing process on it to see if I could see the drive with my win7 pc, all well so far. I'm going to buy a couple more drives and if all is stable I'm going to blow this image away and re-create with raidz2, maybe the timing will be just right for the release of 8.2. If not I'm just going to go ahead anyway, sounds like it will be pretty painless as long as I save my config.

 

[unca_NAS]

Upgrading 8.0.4. > 8.2.0 went very smoothly, thanks for good tips everyone :)