Pool Backup and Restoration Advice

horse_porcupine

Dabbler
Joined
Jun 11, 2013
Messages
22
I'm planning to make some changes to my existing pool structure to give myself some much needed extra space, and am looking for some validation in the steps I think I need to follow! The high-level plan is to increase the number of drives in my pool from six to eight by destroying the original pool and rebuilding with some extra drives I have. As part of that, I plan to move the data from my existing pool to a temporarily created pool in the same server before moving it back.

Ok, so my existing hardware, software, and pools are:
  • Supermicro X10SLL-F
  • i3 4160
  • 16GB ECC memory
  • LSI expansion card
  • FreeNAS-11.3-U5
  • "Z2Pool". Primary data storage. This contains 8 datasets (backups, comics, music, photos, videos, etc), and ~13TB of content. It's an encrypted RaidZ2 pool with a mix of drives between 4 and 8TB, but ultimately it's equivalent to 6x4TB in terms of space.
  • "JailsPool". Self explanatory, it contains my FreeNAS jails. It's not really too relevant to anything going on here, but I just mention here for clarity. It's 2x120GB mirrored SSD's.

My plan is to:
  1. Stop all jails in JailsPool to ensure nothing further is modified on Z2Pool.
  2. Create a new Pool called "Z2Pool_Copy" (4x8TB, RaidZ2, should be ~14TB available storage).
  3. Take a snapshot of Z2Pool (recursive to include the child datasets mentioned above).
  4. Replicate this snapshot to Z2Pool_Copy using FreeNAS GUI.
  5. Validate everything has copied across without issue... Any ideas on how best to do this?
  6. Destroy Z2Pool. Keep existing shares.
  7. Create new pool (8x4TB, RaidZ2) which I will also call "Z2Pool". This pool (unlike the original) will not be encrypted.
  8. Copy data from Z2Pool_Copy back to Z2Pool, again using manual replication in FreeNAS GUI.
  9. Validate everything works as before.
  10. Destroy Z2Pool_Copy, and re-purpose drives in Z2Pool over next few weeks. Ultimately have 8x8TB Z2 Pool.

Does this all sound reasonable...? Am I missing anything? Any pitfalls I should be aware of? I haven't made any use of snapshots or replication really to this point in my use of FreeNAS, so they do make me slightly uneasy! Hoping this all works... :smile:
 

horse_porcupine

Dabbler
Joined
Jun 11, 2013
Messages
22
Hate to bump this, but would be great to get some input on this. I think it should all be fine, but it would really sooth my mind to hear it from somebody more knowledgeable :smile:
 

horse_porcupine

Dabbler
Joined
Jun 11, 2013
Messages
22
For anyone who comes across this post in future, I used a combination of my steps above along with those detailed here to great success!
 

Glorious1

Guru
Joined
Nov 23, 2014
Messages
1,210
I know this is old, but a very important topic. I'm surprised you didn't get advice. I'm planning something similar. In my case it's a bit simpler because I detached and removed a backup pool, so I now have room for both the main pool (Ark) and its replacement, at the same time.

I read depasseg's very useful post that you linked to, but I feel like I'm about to walk through a minefield and want to get the best map and tips I can find.
 
Top