Best way to back up vdev to change vdev

[Driberif]

Hi,

I'm looking to convert my current 2-disk mirror vdev into a 3-drive Raidz1 vdev. It's all 4TB drives.
I am aware that this will involve having to wipe the disks. I'm just wondering what the best way is to back up the data for easy importing after the fact.
I currently do have 2 2TB drives which i intend to use for the purpose of (temporarily) backing up whatever data is currently on the NAS, however i can't fit those into the system directly due to a lack of sata ports. If needed i am able to set up a temporary second freenas system.

Main things i'd like to keep intact are my jails/plugins (Plex, sabnzbd and MineOS), since those require the most effort to reconfigure.

As far as i'm aware, these are my current options:
- Replication

- can I replicate to a windows machine?​

- If not, can I replicate to a different type of vdev on another freenas machine? (on the same network)​

- Manually copy off all the data via SMB shares, and copy it back

- I'm assuming that doing this will completely destroy any setting up i have done to my jails​

Are these indeed my only 2 options or is there a better way to flip all the data to an external computer and then later re-import it?


Currently running FreeNAS-11.3-U2.1, in case that matters (i can upgrade if that makes things easier)

Show : zpool status

Code:

root@freenas[~]# zpool status
  pool: NASPool1
 state: ONLINE
  scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0 days 03:06:48 with 0 errors on Sun Jun 21 06:06:49 2020
config:

        NAME                                            STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        NASPool1                                        ONLINE       0     0 0
          mirror-0                                      ONLINE       0     0 0
            gptid/9fec342a-7be9-11ea-b8ed-a8a159154f7f  ONLINE       0     0 0
            gptid/9ff6f951-7be9-11ea-b8ed-a8a159154f7f  ONLINE       0     0 0

errors: No known data errors

  pool: freenas-boot
state: ONLINE
  scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0 days 00:01:21 with 0 errors on Sun Jul 19 03:46:21 2020
config:

        NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        freenas-boot  ONLINE       0     0     0
          mirror-0  ONLINE       0     0     0
            da0p2   ONLINE       0     0     0
            da1p2   ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

 

[sretalla]

can I replicate to a windows machine?

With Rsync, but I wouldn't call that replication in a true sense, it's a file copy.

can I replicate to a different type of vdev on another freenas machine?

Sure as long as it's got enough free space to take the vdev contents including snapshots.

- Manually copy off all the data via SMB shares, and copy it back
- I'm assuming that doing this will completely destroy any setting up i have done to my jails

Yes and yes.

Are these indeed my only 2 options or is there a better way to flip all the data to an external computer and then later re-import it?

You could do some creative juggling by breaking the mirror and building the RAIDZ1 as a degraded pool (using only 2 of the eventual 3 disks), move the datasets and scrap the last disk in the mirror pool, wipe it and use it to replace the "temporary dead disk" in your degraded RAIDZ1... optionally renaming that pool to the same as the mirror at the end to make it all square again.

NOTE: this would mean living without redundancy for the operation's duration, so consider backups or how important the data is before even thinking about this.

I did a writeup of a similar process I wanted to do in one of my boxes a while back...

Creating a degraded pool

danb35 submitted a new resource: Creating a degraded pool - Creating an intentionally-degraded pool to allow for later expansion/redundancy WARNING: HERE BE DRAGONS. IF YOU DON'T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE DOING, DO NOT FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS. IN FACT, IF YOU NEED THESE INSTRUCTIONS, YOU...

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