How will ZFS react to a change in PCI/SATA controllers?

[globus999]

Currently I have a raidz1 composed of 4 hdds on a single PCI/SATA controller.
How will ZFS react if I replace that controller (based on Sil 3114) with a Promise one?
Both controllers have 4 ports.

Will ZFS automatically recognize that the hdd's attached to the new controller are the same as the old ones and belong to the raidz1 or will it get lost in the process?

 

[matthewowen01]

shouldn't be an issue at all, as long as the drives were not in a hardware based raid on a controller.

 

[globus999]

shouldn't be an issue at all, as long as the drives were not in a hardware based raid on a controller.

Tx!, though so, but just to be clear.
The hdd's are on a Sil3114 cheapo card that it is hardware raid capable. However, my implementation is pure soft raid through ZFS. In other words, I am using the card as IDE only, not RAID. As far as I understand, in these conditions a card replacement should not be an issue. This correct?

 

[Brand]

I would recommend exporting any data volumes, then replacing the controller card, then importing them. Both the exporting and importing can both be done through the GUI.

 

[globus999]

I would recommend exporting any data volumes, then replacing the controller card, then importing them. Both the exporting and importing can both be done through the GUI.

It can? OK, that's news for me, I mean that one can export a raidz1 from the GUI (I know I can import).

Anyhoo, I am switching controllers since I suspect the Sil3114-based may be introducing some small errors. Because of this, I would rather not make any changes to the hdd's. However, I don't know how much info is written to the hdd's themselves during an export operation. Fraid it may screw-up something and then the raidz1 won't come back.

What do you think?

 

[Bohs Hansen]

I'm getting a cheap controller with the same chip one of the next days, will let you know if I get any problems with it. I only needed something real cheap (3€ over ebay, lol) to replace the one with Marvell chip I want to use until a driver has been created for that chip.

 

[globus999]

I'm getting a cheap controller with the same chip one of the next days, will let you know if I get any problems with it. I only needed something real cheap (3€ over ebay, lol) to replace the one with Marvell chip I want to use until a driver has been created for that chip.

The Sil3114 has a tarnished reputation.
I have gone over pretty much all the posts in the net about it and the conclusion is that it may or may not work.... without any assurances. Comments has it that corrupts info. If this is the case ZFS won't help.

In any case, the recommendation is to re-flash it with the IDE BIOS and not to use it with the RAID BIOS.

Over time, I have become *very* suspicious of the chip since I can't, in all honesty, point a finger at anything else in my system. Everything I tested seems OK.

If you have a choice, I would not go there. My 2 c.

 

[Bohs Hansen]

yea, I'm aware of its reputation .. just need something cheap until a driver for BSD has been created for my sata3 controller (and all other new sata3 standalone cards)

 

[boblablah]

best way to accomplish this in freenas 7.0???

I was hoping to do the same thing shortly and have a large zfs mount i was hoping to move from a cheapo controller to a new one.

it's 4 disks. my hope was to simply connect the drives to the new controller, boot up and try a zpool -status and then zpool -import

anything else i need to attempt? - should attempt? no export option in gui for 7.0

 

[globus999]

I was hoping to do the same thing shortly and have a large zfs mount i was hoping to move from a cheapo controller to a new one.

it's 4 disks. my hope was to simply connect the drives to the new controller, boot up and try a zpool -status and then zpool -import

anything else i need to attempt? - should attempt? no export option in gui for 7.0

Sorry, no experience with FN7 (sad to say since it is way better than FN8). Have you tried the FN7-specific forum?