Should I blow up my current FreeNAS Install?

[Nightowl805]

I have a 50TB FreeNAS box that I built 2 years ago (Yes I am feeling pretty stupid, I won't tell you how much ECC memory it has) I have Plex installed and a time machine back-up that. Plex still works fine after the update from 9.1o to 11.1 U4 and time machine kind of works but it is strange now. I really want to add my own cloud server and maybe a couple of private clouds for tech-savvy family. I am wondering if I should just start all over? I don't really understand Docker or even if it's actually working in this version but I thought it was supposed to make things easier then Jails. I don't really mind wasting the time but how do I save my Plex library if I start over?

Does anyone really think its worth it in this version? Lots of what if but curious what you all thought.

 

[kdragon75]

You can easily blow away your install and keep your data. According to your sig, you have mirrored boot drives. For safety, shutdown and disconnect your data drives, boot the installer from USB, and install a fresh copy. Once you reconnect your drives and boot, you can import the old pool. Easy peasey.

You will lose your Plex jail but all data on your pool will still be there. Technically your Plex jail will be too but FreeNAS won't automagicly import it.

 

[Jailer]

Why would you re install if everything is working ok? This isn't Windows.

 

[danb35]

Technically your Plex jail will be too but FreeNAS won't automagicly import it.

Perhaps not, but once you set the jail path to the same as it was before, FreeNAS will pick up any jails that are there. But I'm with @Jailer--why reinstall at all?

I really want to add my own cloud server

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...stallation-of-nextcloud-13-in-iocage-jail.90/

 

[kdragon75]

This isn't Windows.

Thanks for the laugh this morning. "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"

 

[Inxsible]

I have a 50TB FreeNAS box

8WD Red 6TB NAS Hard Drives

Do you mean you have additional drives other than 8x6TB? because that does not equal 50TB.

1 reason to blow away the pool and start from scratch would be to setup a different pool layout. You have not mentioned your current layout.
Assuming you just rounded up 48TB to 50. If it is mirrored, you are effectively getting only half the space (24TB) or around 19.2TB of usable space. You can then choose to redo the pool into a RAIDZ2 configuration which would give you 32TB of space or around 23.6TB of usable space.

Although, IMO, this is not a good time to blow your pools up. IOcage has become the default, I think, but there is still some work going on for some scripts to port over warden jails to iocage. These will be available only in 11.2 or beyond. So maybe you might want to wait it out a bit since everything is working for you as is. Unless you want to create brand new iocage jails.

When you say Plex library, do you mean the Plex metadata -- because that will re-generate without you having to do anything except set up the Plex plugin/jail. You might have to fix a few images/titles if they are not in the standard file naming structure that Plex likes...but the metadata should still generate. Or were you talking about your actual movie/tv files? You'd have to copy that over to some other drives -- but you would have a backup anyway, right?

 

[Nightowl805]

Thank you to everyone for the kind replies. I think I will keep it as it is for now and am definitely trying NextCloud. A backup for plex lol. Who does that? Does NextCloud need a back-up also? I need a second NAS?