How does freenas mount Ubuntu 20.04 soft raid disk?

[3038922]

I found a lot of old servers in school.
But each server has only six SATA interfaces.
I found a lot of 500GB hard drives.
I just installed a new Ubuntu 20.04,And made a soft raid with ext4.
ZFS cannot be selected during installation.
I want to merge raid on Ubuntu server into freenas. Is that ok?There is no data in it.
How can I change my Ubuntu file system to ZFS?

 

[danb35]

I want to merge raid on Ubuntu server into freenas. Is that ok?

No, it isn't.

How can I change my Ubuntu file system to ZFS?

Why are you asking this here? This isn't a Ubuntu forum.

 

[sretalla]

How can I change my Ubuntu file system to ZFS?

Install ZFS on Linux, wipe the disks and use command line tools to create a ZFS volume.

I want to merge raid on Ubuntu server into freenas. Is that ok?There is no data in it.

Put the disks in a system running FreeNAS. Wipe those disks (you said there is no data) under Storage | Disks. Create a ZFS pool with those disks.

 

[3038922]

No, it isn't.

Why are you asking this here? This isn't a Ubuntu forum.

sorry.

 

[3038922]

Install ZFS on Linux, wipe the disks and use command line tools to create a ZFS volume.

Put the disks in a system running FreeNAS. Wipe those disks (you said there is no data) under Storage | Disks. Create a ZFS pool with those disks.

1. I'll change the file format to ZFS first.
2. then add ubuntu's zfs to freenas?use iSCSI?

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

What do you mean by "add Ubuntu's ZFS to FreeNAS"? You install FreeNAS on the hardware instead of Ubuntu.

 

[Samuel Tai]

If I understand what you're trying to do, then there's no way to convert an Ubuntu dmraid in-place to a FreeNAS ZFS zpool. If you have multiple boxes, then it's possible to:

1. Export the data via NFS from the Ubuntu box.
2. Build a 2nd box with FreeNAS.
3. Mount box 1's NFS export on box 2, and copy the data over to a zpool.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

He wrote "there's no data in it". And I still don't get what "merge RAID on Ubuntu server into FreeNAS" is supposed to mean ;)

 

[sretalla]

1. I'll change the file format to ZFS first.

No, wipe the disks first, then create a pool, you can't change the format.

2. then add ubuntu's zfs to freenas?use iSCSI?

Maybe this is a better clue to what you're attempting...

Do you want to offer an iSCSI target from FreeNAS to the Ubuntu box as a disk? (this disk would not be seen as any kind of softraid by Linux, only as an iSCSI target LUN).

 

[no_connection]

Are you trying to run Ubuntu on a bunch of servers to act as glorified SATA ports and then have a master FreeNAS server to "combine" all that space?

If so you might want to look at ESOS. Not sure if that can be done with it but at least it would be a better base than Ubuntu.

As far as FN being used to combine a bunch of iSCSI volumes by using ZFS I see no reason why it could not be done, but I don't think there is any config or gui way to do it, for the very reason that noone outside super edge case would do it.

And tbh a bunch of 500GB disks on multiple servers are not a good way to store files, even if free, it's just to power hungry and likely slow.
But for science I say go for it, have a good time and learn something from it.

ESXi would allow you to use several iSCSI datastores spreading virtual disks around. But it does ofc come with some overhead. And risks...

I am not sure if iSCSI HBA would present itself as one or several SCSI discs but if so that could work too.

You could look at gluster as well.