Migrating Stripe to Raidz1

[Bernard Mentink]

Hi All,

Very new to FreeNAS so please bear with me, also new to raid volumes.

I have a current 2 x 1TB drive arranged as a stripe volume and would like to migrate the data on that volume to a 3 x 2TB RaidZ1 volume, but I want to add in the new drives one at a time as I can afford them.

I understand the normal process is to replace one disk with the larger one by:
1. Physically adding the drive.
2. Marking one of the old drives as OFFLINE and replacing that with the new bigger drive. (how does the data get migrated?)
3. Then I should be able to remove the old 1TB drive?

So I am left with a 1TB and 2TB in stripe right? Is this usable as it is for awhile until I get the next drive?
I know it is not good to have drives not the same size ....

Anyone have a view as to the correct procedure to use to achieve my aim ...

Thanks,

 

[danb35]

Anyone have a view as to the correct procedure to use to achieve my aim ...

Buy the three 2 TB drives, create the RAIDZ1 volume, then migrate the data using the tool of your choice. Alternatively, buy one of the drives, back up your data, destroy the pool, rebuild it as RAIDZ1 (with 2 x 1 TB + 1 x 2 TB drives), then restore the data. Replace the remaining 1 TB drives as funds permit.

Unfortunately, there's just no way to convert a striped volume into a RAIDZ1 volume.

Edit: And review https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

 

[Bernard Mentink]

Understand.
However, If I backed up the data to the 2TB drive, then cleared the 2 x 1TB drives, then can I add all 3 drives as a RAIDZ1 volume "without" clearing the data on the 2TB drive? Then letting that data migrate over the 3 drives .... is that even possible, or does a pool have to be created with clean drives .. (I ask cause I don't have a large enough backup drive, or off-line storage)

Cheers

 

[depasseg]

No, you will need to find a temporary space to put your data. The 3 drives will all be formatted when you create the RAIDZ1.

 

[Bernard Mentink]

ok. I have backup for all the media I put on the volume, but what about all the plugins data, how would I back that up and restore it so that the volume knows about it.

And do I save the config data before creating this new volume, or should I start from new there too ... if I restore from a saved config, it will have data about the old volume setup, so won't
that be wrong for the new volume layout ...


Thanks for the patience ... I am still getting my head around volumes/zpools versus drives ..

I suppose I could get hold of a temporary 2TB drive, install that and backup the whole volume to that and restore from from that and reinstate my config file ... would that be the best way to do it ...

 

[nightshade00013]

What I have done in the past is just copy all the data from a jail. When the new pool is up and running create a new jail then copy all of the data from the backup of the old jail into the new one. The IP address will be different but all of the data should be intact. You can actually try this out but creating a new jail and then shut the jail down and rsync from one jail into the other. This should be done while both jails are shut down but once it's done both should come up and work. I have done this with Plex three times and it has worked fine.

If it's a jail that is easy to setup you can just recreate it.

As far as reinstating a config file there should be no need. The config will be stored on the boot drive not one of the pool drives. You will have to setup any shares as well as jail storage.

 

[Bernard Mentink]

What I have done in the past is just copy all the data from a jail. When the new pool is up and running create a new jail then copy all of the data from the backup of the old jail into the new one. The IP address will be different but all of the data should be intact. You can actually try this out but creating a new jail and then shut the jail down and rsync from one jail into the other. This should be done while both jails are shut down but once it's done both should come up and work. I have done this with Plex three times and it has worked fine.

If it's a jail that is easy to setup you can just recreate it.

As far as reinstating a config file there should be no need. The config will be stored on the boot drive not one of the pool drives. You will have to setup any shares as well as jail storage.

Can you explain how to rsync a jail to an external USB drive?
I don't see any options from the web page to do that, do you have to do that from a shell?

Regarding the config file, it is stored on the client machine not a boot drive. (i.e downloaded from the web admin page)

 

[depasseg]

Here are the steps I took to move to a bigger pool using ZFS snapshots and replications:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...te-data-from-one-pool-to-a-bigger-pool.40519/

But as was mentioned, if you only have a little data, don't need your snapshot history, and it's easy enough to recreate your jails, then just copying the data and rebuilding is probably the easier approach.

 

[pschatz100]

Oops!! Wrong post. Sorry.