how portable is zfs?

[fluca1978]

Hi all,
after a few months of using freenas as a storage backup (thanks for this great project) we have decided to build up a more complex and critical storage system based on it. Now I've got a doubt: imagine I've got a single disk for the freenas os, and a set of disks for a zfs pool. If the system disk crashes, will I be able to mount the zfs array from another system? In other words, if I have to reinstall the system, will the data be there?

 

[pellegj]

Hi all,
after a few months of using freenas as a storage backup (thanks for this great project) we have decided to build up a more complex and critical storage system based on it. Now I've got a doubt: imagine I've got a single disk for the freenas os, and a set of disks for a zfs pool. If the system disk crashes, will I be able to mount the zfs array from another system? In other words, if I have to reinstall the system, will the data be there?

Yes, you should be able to import the ZFS volumes if you have to reinstall freenas. I have done this as a test in a virtual machine, and it worked. The only thing i noticed is that if you a spare drive setup for the array, freenas will not import that, but will see as an unused disk.

 

[fluca1978]

Great to know! I was almost sure it was possible, but I searched for a confirm.

 

[Durkatlon]

I've played with this as well. Works by adding the disks to another FreeNAS box. I have also tried booting an existing system from the FreeBSD8.2 Installation DVD. From there you can go to the "Fixit" shell and I was able to mount the ZFS volume very easily in that environment as well. In fact I would say doing this on ZFS is easier than any other multi-disk file system I have encountered.