Migrating from starwind to FreeNAS

Status
Not open for further replies.

Thomas102

Explorer
Joined
Jun 21, 2017
Messages
83
Hi,

I'm evaluating FreeNAS to replace a windows/starwind iscsi solution and looking for migration procedures.

For the ESXi datastore I plan to use virtualisation tools to clone the VM

But for targets mounted directly to linux hosts,
is it possible to do it directly on FreeNAS, with a dd from the starwind image file to a zvol ?

Thanks.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

joeschmuck

Old Man
Moderator
Joined
May 28, 2011
Messages
10,974
I don't know this answer but I suspect you cannot use "dd" to copy an image to a ZFS pool, think of it this way, could you copy the file to say drive formatted for NTFS using "dd"? I think it would destroy the format of the new host file system. But I'd be curious if something else can be used to do it quickly.
 

Ericloewe

Server Wrangler
Moderator
Joined
Feb 15, 2014
Messages
20,176
Well, it should be possible to dd a raw disk image into a zvol.
 

joeschmuck

Old Man
Moderator
Joined
May 28, 2011
Messages
10,974
Well, it should be possible to dd a raw disk image into a zvol.
I'm curious what the command for that would be as I'm ignorant to this since I thought dd was a block copy operation, not file copy so I don't see how this would work but I'm more than happy to learn.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Ericloewe

Server Wrangler
Moderator
Joined
Feb 15, 2014
Messages
20,176
Something like dd if="/path/to/file/actual_file" of="/path/to/zvol/actual_zvol", I assume.

Don't forget that in Unix everything is a file.
 

joeschmuck

Old Man
Moderator
Joined
May 28, 2011
Messages
10,974
Not sure why I blocked that out but something doesn't feel right to me, it's my inexperience with non-windoze type file systems. Hum, I've never use dd to move a file from one computer to another computer, I've only done file transfers from within the same computer.

@Thomas102 I'd sure like to know the outcome of this.
 

Ericloewe

Server Wrangler
Moderator
Joined
Feb 15, 2014
Messages
20,176
Hum, I've never use dd to move a file from one computer to another computer, I've only done file transfers from within the same computer.
Well, it only needs to be accessible in the filesystem, which is a given if it's shared somehow.
 

kobe11000

Cadet
Joined
Jun 26, 2017
Messages
1
Actually we’ve moved in a totally opposite direction :) We've needed HA, so FreeNAS single head to StarWind HA,
But either way: StarWind plain image format is pretty open, it’s a virtual disk image with some header. You can move it to zvol no problem but… You’d better do migration at file level to preserve all rights and attributes and as suggested above, dd should work for you.
 

Thomas102

Explorer
Joined
Jun 21, 2017
Messages
83
Thanks for your answers.
I tested today with an ESXi lun and it worked pretty well.
I was able to start the VM withour issues.

dd if=images/vm-xxxx112.img of=/dev/zvol/stmir/lun-xxxx112 bs=512M
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top