Hypothetical fire scenario: total loss, but got backups, now what?

[WilbertNL]

Hi all,

I'm having a lot of difficulties finding out what to do if my truenas core 13.0 is a total loss after e.g. a fire. I've set up snapshots, replication to other truenas (let's say it survives the fire), iocage exports (also replicated) and got a config backup.

Can someone please inform me if I've basically backed-up all that is needed and of the global steps to take to perform a full recovery? It doesn't need to be a step-by-step detailed howto, just an outline of the necessary steps.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers,
Wilbert.

 

[victort]

Wouldn’t it be simply setting up a new TrueNAS box, and replicating everything back to it?

I’m actually also wondering about this.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

It is ... you need to use zfs send and zfs receive on the command line for a restore. Probably connected via ssh or nc (netcat). There is no UI. I can assure you that the process works

 

[WilbertNL]

Sure, sounds easy enough, but that's assuming there are already volumes in place to actually receive on, right?

I'm already struggling with figuring out the first part: "simply setting up a new TrueNAS box". So let's say physically I built a new system and I'm powering on for the very first time, then what? If I simply install the release I was using and restore the TrueNas config, it will have problems like not being able to import volumes, since they don't exist yet. If I somehow remember the naming scheme and am able to re-create the pools, the enumeration will be different and reloading the config won't import these new pools, right?

So, the steps I'm at so far:

1. Physically build a new NAS with comparable hardware as the original;
2. Install the used TrueNas release on the boot volume;
3. Oblivious to what the next steps would be....

Thanks for helping out!

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Install.
Create new pool.
Recursively restore your entire backup to the new pool - zfs send | zfs receive does that for you with the right flags.

 

[WilbertNL]

Thanks! So at what point do I restore the system's config, if at all? And jails (with different release versions), plug-ins, etc. are also taken care of with the recursive restore of the entire backup?