New Hardware, Moving an existing installation to it

[Craig Kawahara]

Being a new user, tried FreeNAS on an old pc (4 gB RAM max) and to my surprise, I managed to make the experiment actually connect to my small Windows 7 based network. I have 2, raid volumes, one using 2, 2 TB drives and the other 1, 1 TB drives. While 4 gB seems to work, the documentation recommends 8gb, so I purchased a newer box with a bigger power supply, and more ram. The new box has no OS, so im question is:
Can I just connect the existing boot drive and the two RAID drives and expect FreeNAS to take the proper steps loading the proper modules (drivers)? Any suggestions will be most welcome.

 

[Ericloewe]

1. Backup config
2. Shut down old server
3. Move storage devices over
4. Press power button on new server
5. Possibly reconfigure network adapters
6. ???
7. Profit!

 

[BigDave]

Any suggestions will be most welcome.

At the top of the forum (in RED) is a link entitled Forum Rules. Please give that post a read and you will see
that without details of your hardware, your question may go unanswered. Knowing what hardware you have,
what version of FreeNAS you are running, and how the drives are connected to the hardware will help us to
help you. Click on the show button in my signature for links to the stickied posts which all noobs should read and learn.

 

[depasseg]

Can I just connect the existing boot drive and the two RAID drives and expect FreeNAS to take the proper steps loading the proper modules (drivers)? Any suggestions will be most welcome.

If the drives are formatted as ZFS (meaning you aren't doing hardware RAID), then yes, it's as simple as moving the drives from one system to another.

You used the term RAID card, do you mean the generic thing that your drives are hooked up to (we normally call that an HBA- Host Bus Adapter)? Or are you really using hardware RAID?

And in addition to the above comments, can you please provide the output (paste a screenshot or text in CODE tags) of 'zpool list' and 'camcontrol devlist'?

Thanks!

 

[Craig Kawahara]

Pardon my ignorance...as the computer currently providing home to my first attempt at a NAS unit was going out of service, and so far, having Linux always load modules by default, I did not think the hardware configuration meaningful.

The current FreeNas is home to NAS01 ( 2, 2TB) and NAS02 (2, 1 TB). As for the usage of the word RAID, I guess that is a hold over from Windows. FreeNAS did not offer the RAID option when I did my initial setup...it offered MIRROR which is what I used. The other option was STRIP which I assumed was its version of RAID-0 (I think). Anyhow ada0 is the boot drive (250 gB), ada1 and ada2 are FreeNAS01, and ada3 and ada4 are FreeNAS02. I tried to find out if I was using the ZFS format, but all I could determine was that the drives are LZ4 compression...at this point still learning things so I am not sure if the compression and the format are one in the same. The current box is a Dell Poweredge SC440 which has the 4 gB max RAM. It is overcoming the 4 sata ports on the mobo by using a sata expansion card in a PCIe slot. It also houses a Adaptec SCSI controller which is not used yet, but will be moved over to the new box. The new box is a Dell Poweredge 820. I have at this point been able to get a Windows 7 x64 pc to see the FreeNAS when viewed in Windows Explorer, but have not yet attempted a file transfer. I used CIFS sharing.

Forum member Ericloewe posted "backup config" which I tried, but again newness is shooting me in the foot, for when I tried the backup, I still have yet to properly identify a location to put it. A need a how to for dummies...the manual is good, but you almost have to know what you are trying to look up.

Anyway, thank you for your assistance.

 

[pirateghost]

You backup the config to your PC... The one you're typing from and accessing the Web GUI from.