Moving drives between FreeNAS boxes

[Redcoat]

I have to take my 11.0-U4 FreeNAS Mini down for investigation of memory error (more questions on that topic in another coming thread) and will move its 4 drives (single volume) to spare bays in my backup Dell machine and import and use the data and shares there while the Mini is out of commission.

I did the same earlier this year when the Mini's ASRock MB expired (replaced by iXsystems under warranty - thanks), at that time having no opportunity to prepare the drives for the move as the box was dead. As it was the pool imported just fine and co-existed with the Dell's data until I put the drives back into the fixed Mini. I cannot find my notes from that replacement so I do not know if I exported the drives and offlined the disks for the return - I suspect that I did, but I don't know.

This time it's different as the Mini is running, so I'd like to follow the best procedure. Checking the manual, I should detach the volume without destroying the data, then offline the drives before shutting off and moving them over.

My question here is this: is there any reason that I should not leave the share configuration as is during either of the moves (uncheck the box on the detach volume dialog box)? I do not want to have to redo it either when the disks are in the Dell or later when they go back to the Mini if I don't have to.

 

[danb35]

Checking the manual, I should detach the volume without destroying the data, then offline the drives before shutting off and moving them over.

Once you've detached the volume, you won't be able to offline the disks. And you wouldn't want to anyway. Detach the volume, don't mark the disks as new, don't delete the share configuration, shut down the system, move the disks and the boot device to the new hardware.

 

[Redcoat]

Once you've detached the volume, you won't be able to offline the disks. And you wouldn't want to anyway. Detach the volume, don't mark the disks as new, don't delete the share configuration, shut down the system, move the disks and the boot device to the new hardware.

Thanks @danb35, appreciate the clarification.

 

[Chris Moore]

I have to take my 11.0-U4 FreeNAS Mini down for investigation of memory error (more questions on that topic in another coming thread) and will move its 4 drives (single volume) to spare bays in my backup Dell machine and import and use the data and shares there while the Mini is out of commission.

I did the same earlier this year when the Mini's ASRock MB expired (replaced by iXsystems under warranty - thanks), at that time having no opportunity to prepare the drives for the move as the box was dead. As it was the pool imported just fine and co-existed with the Dell's data until I put the drives back into the fixed Mini. I cannot find my notes from that replacement so I do not know if I exported the drives and offlined the disks for the return - I suspect that I did, but I don't know.

This time it's different as the Mini is running, so I'd like to follow the best procedure. Checking the manual, I should detach the volume without destroying the data, then offline the drives before shutting off and moving them over.

My question here is this: is there any reason that I should not leave the share configuration as is during either of the moves (uncheck the box on the detach volume dialog box)? I do not want to have to redo it either when the disks are in the Dell or later when they go back to the Mini if I don't have to.

You really don't have to do any of that just shut the machine down take the discs out and put them in the other machine. Your zpool is automatically unmounted when you shut your machine down and remounted when you reboot the machine.

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[Chris Moore]

If you put a pool into a "foreign" host, the pool will need to be imported and the mount point set.

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[Redcoat]

Thanks, @Chris Moore. I just watched the progress of a shutdown and the third step reported was "Unmounting user-supplied file systems" with later drive disconnection. I'll follow your suggestion.