FreeNas 8.0.1 Guide for moving ZFS data between hardware?

[shan81]

Hi Everybody.


I'm trying to find a current guide that covers FreeNas 8.0.1 for moving ZFS data between hardware.

Currently, I have 8 X 1TB drives that I wish to move to new hardware. I'm trying to use the guide as posted here:

http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=102&t=7922

But it doesn't appear to work, as when I SSL into my box and run the command:

"awk 'BEGIN{x=1}/<zfs>|<disks>/{print;getline;x=0}/<\/zfs>|<\/disks>/{x=1}x' /conf/config.xml > /tmp/temp.config.xml"

I receive the error: "awk: can't open file /conf/config.xml source line number 1"

Could anybody shed some light on what I'm doing wrong? Will the rest of the information in the above guide work with FreeNas 8.0.1? Or should I be doing something else entirely?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Sorry I'm a FreeBSD n00b.


Cheers,

Shan.

 

[ProtoSD]

That guide is for version 7, which I'm sure you're aware of or you wouldn't be asking here. I don't know really what the person who wrote it was hoping to gain from all this 'extra' stuff. It's really very simple to do. Export your pool, either from the GUI or the command line, install disks in new hardware, boot a clean installation of FreeNAS and do an Auto Import from the GUI. The disks contain the order/signature information of how to rebuild/import the pool.

I think basically all those instructions do is gather all the information that you see when you do a View All volumes -> View Disks on version 8.x

You are talking about moving disks between hardware from an existing version 8 installion to another version 8 installation?
Not from version 7 to version 8, correct?

 

[shan81]

Hi Protosd,

Thanks for your quick reply. I'm moving disks between hardware that are both running the latest version of FreeNas (8.0.1)

When you're talking about "exporting your pool" are you talking about "Export Volumes" ?

Could you please expand on the process of this operation.

 

[ProtoSD]

When you're talking about "exporting your pool" are you talking about "Export Volumes" ?

Yes.

Storage pools should be exported to indicate that they are ready to be migrated. This operation flushes any unwritten data to disk, writes data to the disk indicating that the export was done, and removes all knowledge of the pool from the system. If you do not explicitly export the pool, but instead remove the disks manually, you can still import the resulting pool on another system. However, you might lose the last few seconds of data transactions, and the pool will appear faulted on the original machine because the devices are no longer present. By default, the destination machine refuses to import a pool that has not been explicitly exported. This condition is necessary to prevent accidentally importing an active pool that consists of network attached storage that is still in use on another system.

Could you please expand on the process of this operation.

In the GUI, on the left sidebar click:


Storage -> Volumes -> View All Volumes


The export button shows a stack of disks with a red X.


After that, your pool should no longer appear in the GUI. Shutdown your system, swap the hardware, plug the disks in, the order isn't important, restart the system- you *should* be able to reuse the same flash drive with all of your settings and then just go back to Storage -> Volumes -> View All Volumes and click on the "Auto Import" button on the right. *Sometimes* the GUI has problems and says something like "Error getting used space". Then you usually need to try the import from the command line and once you're successful doing that, export from the command line and do the Auto Import from the GUI again. You also might need to try a clean installation of FreeNAS and Auto Import. It depends on how the GUI is 'feeling' and if it properly erased all the knowledge of the pool on the old hardware.


That's about it really.

 

[shan81]

Hi Protosd,

The auto-importing worked great. Thanks for all your help.