Correct upgrade path

[qwerty00]

I have a system with 3 drives and 5 bays. Recently, I felt that 3 drives is not enough so I decided to add a couple more drives. I don't really want to add a vdev with two mirrored drives so I'm going to get 5 new drives and create a new vdev (FYI, I should have enough ports to attach all the drives at once). The questions are:
- Is adding a new pool/5-drive-vdev and sending a snapshot to it a right/simplest way to preserve all the data?
- This should be done via CLI, shouldn't it?
- The drives are identified by UUID so I can move them freely from port to port, can't I?

Thanks in advance for the answer.

 

[indivision]

- Is adding a new pool/5-drive-vdev and sending a snapshot to it a right/simplest way to preserve all the data?

I think it depends on what you mean by "preserve".

Snapshots are typically for preserving the data in specific states over time in case you need to roll back. This can help correct "user error" like accidentally deleting a bunch of files.

That said, snapshots are not back-ups. If you want to preserve the data as a back-up you should look to sync it with another location. TrueNAS has built-in capability to back up to Backblaze. It's easy to set up, affordable and off-site. So, pretty good deal, imo.

Or, do you mean Replication?

- This should be done via CLI, shouldn't it?

Setting up backup sync, snapshots and replication can all be done in the GUI.

- The drives are identified by UUID so I can move them freely from port to port, can't I?

I believe so. But, I wouldn't go out of my way to test that if I could avoid it.

 

[qwerty00]

Alight, thanks.

So the plan is the following then:
- Get 5 drives
- Remove old ones, stick the new ones into bays, connect the old ones to the extra mobo ports
- stop all k3s apps
- Create new vdev/pool
- run replication through gui
- change system dataset
- destroy original pool
- rename the new one somehow
- detach old drives to use in another system

 

[indivision]

Alight, thanks.

So the plan is the following then:
- Get 5 drives
- Remove old ones, stick the new ones into bays, connect the old ones to the extra mobo ports
- stop all k3s apps
- Create new vdev/pool
- run replication through gui
- change system dataset
- destroy original pool
- rename the new one somehow
- detach old drives to use in another system

That seems workable. I think it would be safer if you have an in-between drive that will survive separate from the old and new pool. For example an SSD drive. That way you could put your system and k3s apps dataset there and not complicate them in the transfer.

You could also look into Rsync to copy the data over.

 

[qwerty00]

Thanks a lot!