Increasing the size of my pool

[adrianwi]

I've got a little bit of time off so thought it would be a perfect opportunity to rebuild my main FreeNAS box (APE1) with a few more disks. It's running with 7x4TB at the minute in RAIDZ2 and I'm at 70% full. I have periodic snapshots setup and a nightly replication to a 2nd FreeNAS box (APE2) with 5x4TB drives in a stripe.

I've added another 2x4TB drives into APE1 and realise I'll need to destroy the existing pool and recreate with a 9x4TB RAIDZ2 pool, but need to be able to replicate back from APE2 keeping all the configuration and jails working on APE1.

I'd bookmarked this thread > https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...te-data-from-one-pool-to-a-bigger-pool.40519/ hoping I could do something similar, but don't have enough ports to do it all within one box.

I don't use APE2 for anything other than a backup, but thought I'd test to see what happened to the jails that are replicated across. I pointed the jail configuration root to the /mnt/APE2pool/jails dataset and all of the jails appears in the jails list. When I try and access the jail shell though, it just flashes up and closes down, so I guess something is missing from the replication between APE1 to APE2 and I'll need to keep this from APE1 before I destroy the pool, so I can put it back.

Any idea on the best way to achieve this so I don't have to rebuild the jails again on APE1 would be much appreciated.

Thanks

UPDATE:

I thought I'd reboot APE2 and I can now start a jail and access the shell. Tested Plex and ownCloud and other than mounting some datasets to the jails and adding the new IP address as a trusted domain for ownCloud everything appears to work!

Other suggestions and tips as to the best way to do this would still be good...

 

[depasseg]

When you replicate from APE2, back to APE1, your jails should work. That's what I did. It doesn't matter if the replication is done on the same box, or a different server.
And here's another post on specifically moving jails, in case you want to handle them separately.
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...n-volume-to-new-ssd-volume.42105/#post-271740

 

[adrianwi]

Thanks!

I'm still a little confused about the system dataset, which I assume will be destroyed when kill the APE1 pool? What's stored in this compared with the configuration backup, which I've scheduled as a nightly job?

I've set-up the periodic snapshots and replication tasks on APE2 ready to send back to the new pool on APE1. Just need to build up the courage to kill my pool on APE1, which I've been putting off for some months now as everything is working so well!

At 70% I still don't really need the space, although it's just a matter of time. I'm also still on 9.3.0 (from June 15) so will need to update that at some point and probably worth getting the extra disk in first.

 

[depasseg]

You should move the system dataset to somewhere else, like the boot pool (the system dataset contains reporting info). That is step #1 in the post you linked to above.

Yeah, I hear ya, it's hard to decide to destroy a perfectly good pool. Just make sure you are comfortable that your backups are a match to your production system (sizes match and all datasets are accounted for).

 

[adrianwi]

It's done! Although I wasn't feeling particularly brave this morning, I do have some spare time on my hands (between contracts) so thought I better just bite the bullet!

Here's what I did:

• Deleted all snapshots on APE2
• Created new periodic snapshots on APE2
• Created disabled replication tasks on APE2 > APE1 (including public key into root user on APE1)
• Copied system dataset on APE1 onto freenas-boot
• Detached volume on APE1 (the painful bit with the red screen of fear!)
• Recreated RAIDZ2 pool with 9 disks
• Enabled replication tasks on APE2 (which started transfer back to APE1, and the first sigh of relief)
• Copied system dataset on APE1 back to zpool

Just need to wait for the replication to complete now which may take some time. I did enable the Plex Media Server jail on APE2 and redirected the port on my router so at least I have something to watch while I'm waiting :D

 

[adrianwi]

Wow. How painless was that? Other than taking over 50h to transfer the data back to the bigger pool on APE1, and a restart, everything is working exactly as it was before.

Just need to set-up some periodic snapshots to transfer everything back to APE2...

 

[depasseg]

Congrats!