Moving pool away from bad controller: do I attempt to export or not?

[StephenFry]

FreeNAS is currently limping due to what I suspect are controller problems. Constant crashes etc. Basically, I'm not sure if the system will be up in five minutes' time or not.

So I've now ordered an IBM M1015 which hopefully will soon present itself as a LSI 9211-8i running in IT mode.

This is a completely different controller than the slapped-together mess of SATA controllers and ports I've been using so far.

What is the best course of action to take here?

• Do I disconnect my drives from the old controllers, connect them to the new one and expect FreeNAS to pick up the (ZFS v15) pool automagically?
• Or do I attempt to give an EXPORT POOL command, but risking who-knows-what when the system decides to go down at that moment?

Thanks. I'm much looking forward to upgrading to ZFS v28, but that's for another time.

 

[cyberjock]

Assuming everything else in the computer is the same but the hard disk controller you should be able to:

1. Shutdown the server
2. Remove the old controller and install the new controller. Hook up the hard disks(any order will work).
3. Powerup the server and it should automagically work. It 'may' be prudent to do an additional reboot. I had a weird problem when replacing a controller that fixed itself with a reboot.

It may be a good idea to do a scrub after you get the new controller working just to make sure all is well with your zpool.

 

[paleoN]

What is the best course of action to take here?

Leave your system powered off. If it's so unstable you shouldn't attempt to run it.

I would replace the controllers and not play around with anything else. Normally you would export it first. In your case the controllers are bad and you don't want to do anything through them.

It may be a good idea to do a scrub after you get the new controller working just to make sure all is well with your zpool.

Definitely scrub the pool once you switch over.

 

[StephenFry]

Thanks noobsauce80 and paleoN, clear advice. Will not touch the machine for now.

The new controller should arrive tomorrow; the SFF-8087 cables are slightly delayed unfortunately.

 

[StephenFry]

The hardware and cables are all finally here.

Connected the lot, booted up the system with my old FreeNAS and it all worked as if nothing had happened. Didn't have to do a single thing.

I'm going to scrub the pool, but only after I know I can trust this new hardware.

 

[cyberjock]

Glad to hear it. I want to see more stories like this in the forum!