Recycling a NAS Box

[gabster]

Hi Gang!

The scenario:
I do have already an existing NAS box I built earlier this year, running perfectly fine, with 5x 3Tb drives (RaidZ2).
So, I need to build a box for a dedicated color grading station (using Blackmagic daVinci Resolve). Powerful enough, of course. Windows or Linux OS, not sure yet.

I'm curious to know what would be your ideas of re-using those HDDs (with already existent data on it) in this new box I'm building.
I sense that I will probably need to backup all data on an external storage and start from scratch, but I was just curious to hear from you first.

thanks a lot!
gabi.

 

[nojohnny101]

It is actually quite simple, all you need to do is export the volume on your current box and then import the volume on your new machine.

FreeNAS will keep all existing structures the same and all your data will be intact. That is one of the major beauties, the pool really doesn't care what motherboard it is attached to.

 

[gabster]

thanks @nojohnny101

Just to make sure I understand you correctly:

1. Export volume from current NAS to an external storage
2. Re-cycle the NAS drives into new machine running (note: running windows or linux, more than likely they will be formatted).
3. Configure the drives as RaidZ2
4. Import volume

Do I have these right?

thanks!!

 

[nojohnny101]

Not exactly. There is an "export volume" button on the storage tab of the GUI. Push that and make sure you DO NOT check the "destroy data" (or whatever it says) option.

Then when you have the new box setup, attach all the drives then choose "import volume" from the storage tab of the GUI and the volume should show up for you to select to import.

Done.

 

[Stux]

Be careful. Your new system has to support ZFS with all the features used in your old pool.

 

[wblock]

What brand/model/type of NAS was the one built earlier?

Regardless of how you do this, make an external backup first. After that, exporting the pool is essentially unmounting it. Transfer the drives to the new NAS, then import the pool there.

If you don't have a backup, expect this to go horribly wrong at the slightest provocation.

If you have a backup and are careful, it will all go fine and the original data will be present.

 

[gabster]

Good advice gang! Thanks a lot.

I just wanted to stress the fact that I am planning the new box running windows or linux as the overall operating system (from where I suppose one can configure the attached HDDs as a raid system)
So, no freeNAS on the new system. At least I don't see the need.
Am I going in the right direction?

Edit: I am going for the fastest connection possible to that raid pool.

thanks!

 

[danb35]

Well, if the new box will be running Windows, it won't be doing ZFS, and therefore you won't be using RAIDZ2. Linux support for ZFS is pretty good, though.

 

[pirateghost]

Good advice gang! Thanks a lot.

I just wanted to stress the fact that I am planning the new box running windows or linux as the overall operating system (from where I suppose one can configure the attached HDDs as a raid system)
So, no freeNAS on the new system. At least I don't see the need.
Am I going in the right direction?

thanks!

If your current NAS is FreeNAS, and you want to keep the data intact, you need to use an OS that supports ZFS. Windows absolutely does not support ZFS.

 

[gabster]

Good point @danb35 and @pirateghost

Yes, my current NAS is a FreeNAS box, but the new system won't be supporting it since I need to have daVinci Resolve (a coloring suite) running on it. Not sure if I'll be running windows or Linux yet (depends which one daVinci Resolve favors most).
So I guess at this point I should just backup the data on an external drive, build the new system and wipe the drives clean to run under the new OS (win or linux).

thanks!

 

[nojohnny101]

Oh sorry @gabster I thought you were migrating a more powerful FreeNAS build. Dangerous assumption, my fault.

As others have said, the import export process described only works from zfs to zfs