Replication to older version

[Tsaukpaetra]

I'm ducking my head for how stupid this sounds, but I'm thinking of getting a super-cheap whatever-Atom box and throwing FreeNAS on it to use as a replication target. The idea is that it's just the dumping ground for replication, and nothing more (so not actual NAS things, really) so performance is not even considered.

The problem is that most cheapo devices seem to be Atom 32-bit POS boxes, which (obviously) aren't really supported anymore (since we stopped building for x86).

I'm thinking it would almost be ok, except since the ZFS feature set would probably be behind, ZFS Send/Receive would inherently fail.

 

[mav@]

From one side ZFS replication stream should be quite version-agnostic. There are some new replication features in new versions, but they require to be explicitly enabled with command line parameters.

From another side you are asking about running unsupported version of FreeNAS on unsupported hardware, so verdict is obviously predictable -- unsupported. ;)

 

[Tsaukpaetra]

From one side ZFS replication stream should be quite version-agnostic. There are some new replication features in new versions, but they require to be explicitly enabled with command line parameters.

Well that's good to hear! Almost makes me brave enough to try! ;)

 

[cyberjock]

The only supported configuration is replicating to a destination box that is the same version or newer than the source. That's it. ZFS flags being incompatible and other problems will make replication not work otherwise.

Bottom line, make your backup system the same version or newer, or don't do ZFS replication. ;)

 

[Tsaukpaetra]

The only supported configuration is replicating to a destination box that is the same version or newer than the source. That's it. ZFS flags being incompatible and other problems will make replication not work otherwise.

Bottom line, make your backup system the same version or newer, or don't do ZFS replication. ;)

That's more in line with my expectations, TBH.