dweimer
Dabbler
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2011
- Messages
- 11
I am planning to consolidate my FreeBSD web server and my FreeNAS box to a single box using VMware ESXi. I have been researching this for a while, and have purchased hardware that has the capability to handle the ESXi SCSI pass through so that I can present the data volumes to the FreeNAS box as raw SCSI devices. Assuming this all goes well and everything works as expected, I will need to migrate my data over to the new system, preferably without doing a restore from backup.
Yes I have up to date backups just in case.
In searching for the procedures of switching to new hardware with existing drives, a lot of the information says to make sure that the disks stay in the same order. However as I have done some work with ZFS on FreeBSD, I was looking at status for the zpool, and it appears that at least in the latest 8.3.1 that the zpool is referencing the disks by GPTID, which if I am not mistaken doesn't require that the drives be in order as the GPTID is attached to the GEOM partition and shouldn't change no matter what order the drives are in.
[root@freenas] ~# zpool status
pool: V01
state: ONLINE
scan: scrub repaired 0 in 1h19m with 0 errors on Mon Feb 18 10:02:02 2013
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
V01 ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1-0 ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/eac9cafe-4c75-11e1-a340-001485f6b07b ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/eb39eb37-4c75-11e1-a340-001485f6b07b ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/ebb2766e-4c75-11e1-a340-001485f6b07b ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/ec3a1f5e-4c75-11e1-a340-001485f6b07b ONLINE 0 0 0
errors: No known data errors
Can anyone confirm for me that the order is no longer relevant to the zpool correctly seeing the drives?
-- FYI, if everything works out as planned, I intend to post a thread detailing the hardware/ESXi/FreeNAS configuration, in addition to details on performance, as I see questions about running on ESX frequently come up, its all mid-range consumer hardware that took several hours to track down specific requirements for supported features, while keeping the cost in a range that my budget could support for my home lab.
Yes I have up to date backups just in case.
In searching for the procedures of switching to new hardware with existing drives, a lot of the information says to make sure that the disks stay in the same order. However as I have done some work with ZFS on FreeBSD, I was looking at status for the zpool, and it appears that at least in the latest 8.3.1 that the zpool is referencing the disks by GPTID, which if I am not mistaken doesn't require that the drives be in order as the GPTID is attached to the GEOM partition and shouldn't change no matter what order the drives are in.
[root@freenas] ~# zpool status
pool: V01
state: ONLINE
scan: scrub repaired 0 in 1h19m with 0 errors on Mon Feb 18 10:02:02 2013
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
V01 ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1-0 ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/eac9cafe-4c75-11e1-a340-001485f6b07b ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/eb39eb37-4c75-11e1-a340-001485f6b07b ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/ebb2766e-4c75-11e1-a340-001485f6b07b ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/ec3a1f5e-4c75-11e1-a340-001485f6b07b ONLINE 0 0 0
errors: No known data errors
Can anyone confirm for me that the order is no longer relevant to the zpool correctly seeing the drives?
-- FYI, if everything works out as planned, I intend to post a thread detailing the hardware/ESXi/FreeNAS configuration, in addition to details on performance, as I see questions about running on ESX frequently come up, its all mid-range consumer hardware that took several hours to track down specific requirements for supported features, while keeping the cost in a range that my budget could support for my home lab.
