OS, boot drive, and HDD upgrades. In what order?

[Unruffled]

I want to do the following things on my build, but I have no idea in what order/priority:

• Upgrade the OS from 11.2-U5 to 12.x
• Upgrade the boot drive from USB flash drive to a SSD
• Upgrade my drives from SMR to CMR (2x 4TB, mirrored)

I don't mind starting with a fresh install and copy the data over to the new pool.

What do you recommend?

 

[Samuel Tai]

SMR drives first. Data safety always takes priority.
You can install 12.x on a SSD later to combine the other 2 changes into 1; this will also allow you an easy reversion path to your original 11.x thumb drive.

 

[Unruffled]

I am trying to figure out how to do the CMR upgrade. Would it be something like this?

• Create pool B
• Take a snapshot of the entire pool A
• Replicate the snapshot on pool B
• Update shares, tasks, etc. with pool B as source
• Decommission pool A

Does it matter if pool B is encrypted and pool A is not?

 

[Samuel Tai]

With a mirror, you can just resilver in place, following the procedure described in the 11.3 Guide, Section 10.5.1. Since this is an encrypted pool, you'll need to:

• First, run midclt call disk.query | jq, glabel list, and zpool status -v <name of your pool>. Use these to create a table of all disks containing their individual serial number, pool GPT ID, and its device name.
• Next, get a UPS, and install your server onto it.
• Take one drive OFFLINE in the GUI. This will transition your pool to a DEGRADED state.
• Physically remove the OFFLINE drive. Make sure you remove the correct drive: match the serial number to the table you created earlier.
• Install the new CMR drive, and then select Replace in the menu under the 3 dots beside the OFFLINE drive. Pull down to the device name of the new drive, which should match the device name of the old drive you pulled. This will start the resilver process. Note: try not to have the server go down during the resilver. This is why a UPS is critical.
• Once the resilver is done, and your pool is back in an ONLINE state, immediately reset the encryption key on the pool. Also generate a recovery key. This makes sure the new disk is properly keyed, and you have a recovery key that's good for both disks.
• Repeat for the other drive in the mirror. Again, reset the encryption key and generate a recovery key after the resilver completes.

 

[Unruffled]

Thank you for the detailed instructions.

[...] immediately reset the encryption key on the pool. Also generate a recovery key. This makes sure the new disk is properly keyed, and you have a recovery key that's good for both disks.

I wasn't sure how to do this, and didn't want to risk anything. So I did zpool attach my new disks to the pool, then I'll zpool detach the old ones. My pool will remain unencrypted.

I also mirrored the boot pool with a SDD.

For the OS update, when I go to System -> Update, I see from the drop down:

• FreeNAS-11.2-STABLE
• TrueNAS-12.1-Nightfiles

Do I need to do consecutive updates between 11.2U5 and 12.0-U2? Or I start with a clean install of 12.0-U2 and upload my current config?

Edit: I updated to 11.2-U8, then 11.3-U5, then12.0-U2.1.