migrating to freenas from nas4free

[dhawk312]

I would like to migrate back to freenas from nas4free. I'm currently using build nas4free
9.2.0.1.972, which is about a 14 months old. I'm running 2 zpools: one is a 3 2TB drives, and other 3 3TB drives. When I run zfs get -r version I get a value of 4 for the 2TB zpool and 5 for the 3TB zpool.

Would there be any issue switching to freenas? And, would doing so be as easy as installing freenas on a usb then importing my zpools?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Would there be any issue switching to freenas? And, would doing so be as easy as installing freenas on a usb then importing my zpools?

Not, sure, but I think trying it is actually pretty low risk:

1. Do whatever backups you can do in nas4free.
2. Detach the pool from nas4free (so ZFS doesn't complain that it's in use).
3. Clean install FreeNAS on a different boot device.
4. Attempt to import the pool in the FreeNAS GUI.

If step 4 fails, no changes will have been made to your pool and you'll be able to go back to nas4free. If it succeeds, you've reached your goal.

 

[SweetAndLow]

1. Does your hardware meet the minimum spec.
2. You should probably rebuild your pool under freenas. It expects certain disk layout things to make everything work well. Like gptid and 2GB swap on each disk.
3. You should also move away from z1 and build a raidz2 pool for a much more reliable pool

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

2. You should probably rebuild your pool under freenas. It expects certain disk layout things to make everything work well. Like gptid and 2GB swap on each disk.

Good point, forgot about that. Ignore my earlier post.

 

[dhawk312]

1. Does your hardware meet the minimum spec.
2. You should probably rebuild your pool under freenas. It expects certain disk layout things to make everything work well. Like gptid and 2GB swap on each disk.
3. You should also move away from z1 and build a raidz2 pool for a much more reliable pool

1. Hardware spec is fine. I used to run freenas 8 then switched to nas4free a couple years ago. I have a dual core AMD APU mb with 8GB ram. But this is a file server for my home use. I'm not doing video transcoding or anything with it.
2. Rebuilding the pool means what? Does this mean deleting my data? Does freenas 9.2/3 assign gptids and create a 2GB swap during the rebuild?
3. I don't have 12TB of spare drives lying around to reformat a raidz1 to a z2. Unless this can be done with deleting data?

 

[SweetAndLow]

You would need to backup all your data and delete everything on your pool. If you built the pool with freenas 8 it might be configured correctly already. What does zpool status say?

 

[dhawk312]

do you mean running the zpool status command?

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
Zpool1 ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1-0 ONLINE 0 0 0
gpt/disk0 ONLINE 0 0 0
gpt/disk1 ONLINE 0 0 0
ada0p2 ONLINE 0 0 0

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
Zpool2 ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1-0 ONLINE 0 0 0
ada3 ONLINE 0 0 0
ada4 ONLINE 0 0 0
ada5 ONLINE 0 0 0


Zpool1 was creaded in freenas 8, Zpool2 was created in nas4free. Also, not really interested in going with raidz2. I'm happy with my raidz1. I'm more interested in how to best switch from nas4free back to freenas/

 

[SweetAndLow]

Well as you can see zpool1 is partially messed up, did you replace a drive in that pool using the CLI or possibly nas4free? Also zpool2 is completely messed up. You can probably import them into freenas but I can't promise that everything is going to work correctly.

 

[dhawk312]

What do you mean one is partially messed up and one is completely messed up? And, no, no drives have been replaced.

 

[gpsguy]

Your disks should be using gptid's. The 2nd pool was created using whole disks. FreeNAS' webGUI partitions the drive and sets 2GB aside for swap. If you sized the RAM correctly you shouldn't need the swap space. It's mainly there in the event that you need to replace a drive and the replacement is a few bytes larger than the original disk.


Sent from my phone

 

[solarisguy]

Just asking, is ECC operational?

 

[dhawk312]

Yes, I have 8GB ECC ram.

@gpsguy - would you recommend switching OSs or leaving it as is?

 

[gpsguy]

I'd try to borrow some hard disks and do what SweetAndLow said. Should a disk fail, you might find yourself in a world of hurt.

Better to bite the bullet and fix it now, than wait.