Jails, RAID, and snapshots

[Diekatzchen]

My current setup is that my jails are on a small, dedicated hard drive. I have a spare, similarly sized hard drive. My goal is to have my jails on a raid 1 array and be able to take snapshots of individual jails.

A) Can I just... move the Jail folder, create the array, and move it back

B) Is there anything in the .meta folders that I need in the snapshots and if so, is there any way to include them in the individual snapshots?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

A) Yes, assuming you meant "snapshot the jails dataset, replicate it, create the array, replicate it back".
B) Dunno. Any reason not to snapshot the jails dataset recursively?

 

[Diekatzchen]

A) Yes, assuming you meant "snapshot the jails dataset, replicate it, create the array, replicate it back".

That's not quite what I meant, is that what I should do? Can I set up the existing jail folder to be a dataset without messing anything up?

B) Dunno. Any reason not to snapshot the jails dataset recursively?

How do you mean, recursively?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

A) Unless there's something very odd about your setup, the jails dataset is a dataset, not a folder. Hint: if it shows up in the Storage | Volumes tab, it's a dataset (or a pool). Therefore, the process I outlined is the correct way to back it up and restore it later.

B) When taking a snapshot manually and when configuring a Periodic Snapshot Task, you have the option of making it recursive, which means "also snapshot all child datasets".

With respect, it seems to me like you have some homework to do on basic ZFS concepts and storage management in FreeNAS.

 

[Diekatzchen]

Just checked. My jail is not a dataset, it's definitely just a folder. Advice on how to fix this?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Please post either the output of zfs list (between CODE tags) or a screenshot of your Storage tab.

 

[Diekatzchen]

Code:

NAME                  USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
Data                 1.97T   719G  1.87T  /mnt/Data
Data/.system         33.9M   719G   176K  /mnt/Data/.system
Data/.system/cores   17.0M   719G  17.0M  /mnt/Data/.system/cores
Data/.system/rrd      144K   719G   144K  /mnt/Data/.system/rrd
Data/.system/samba4  9.48M   719G  9.48M  /mnt/Data/.system/samba4
Data/.system/syslog  7.02M   719G  7.02M  /mnt/Data/.system/syslog
Data/Downloads       93.9G   719G  93.9G  /mnt/Data/Downloads
Data/MacParty         674M   719G   674M  /mnt/Data/MacParty
Data/Party           6.43G   719G  6.43G  /mnt/Data/Party
Data/VirtualBox      4.62G   719G  4.62G  /mnt/Data/VirtualBox

I think the hard drive the Jail is on might not actually be ZFS. I think it's still NTFS from back in FreeNAS v. 7.x when you could do that.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

OK, so there is something odd about your setup. Unfortunately I don't know the best way forward from where you are now. Perhaps you should study the FreeBSD jails documentation for guidance.