upgrade from 9 to latest version

[phier]

Hi,
i am running

	FreeNAS-9.10.2-U6 (561f0d7a1)

What is the best/safest way to upgrade it to the latest stable version? I have encryption on drives... and i dont have backup of all data ... as storage is huge... is it safe/possible to upgrade?

thanks

 

[artlessknave]

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pretty much everyone here who could answer that question probably will pass your post because it looks clear you didn't read the forum guidelines, and with no backup we'll pretty much all consider anything you do living dangerously, *particularly* with encryption.
not only does zfs have basically zero data recovery measures (zfs *assumes* you have backups), encryption makes many things like that useless, and while zfs can be really easy to mess up, freenas' current encryption scheme is ludicrously easy to mess up while having no idea its broken.

that said, if you don't care about the data (which with no backup is pretty much implied), 9.10 is only 3 major versions behind, and is kind of the spiritual replacement of the freenas 10 "corral" we all pretend doesn't exist, so your upgrade path would be 11.0>11.1>11.2 to be most "Safe" given the above caveats.

 

[phier]

hi,
i know its my issue, just cant afford parallel storage to full backup ... so does it mean i have to start with fresh 11.0 install instead of upgrade? thanks

 

[SweetAndLow]

Just upgrade, you can always roll back to a previous boot environment. Make sure to backup your config in case your boot device fails. You can also just get a new but device, install the latest release and upload your config width your encouragement keys.

 

[phier]

Just upgrade, you can always roll back to a previous boot environment. Make sure to backup your config in case your boot device fails. You can also just get a new but device, install the latest release and upload your config width your encouragement keys.

well i dont think its that easy... as you are saying .. just upgrade, i have drives encrpytion, running 3 vm using bhyve, snapshotting, nfs/samba setup, jail apps, iscsii device exported etc...

 

[SweetAndLow]

well i don't think its that easy... as you are saying .. just upgrade, i have drives encrpytion, running 3 vm using bhyve, snapshotting, nfs/samba setup, jail apps, iscsii device exported etc...

All jails will probably break, that's a big jump for userspace and kernel to differ. Things also switched to iocage. Your VM should be fine, I don't run any though. Smb, nfs, iscsii should be fine. Some people had issues with encrypted drives when they upgraded to 11.x but I think that got fixed in the maintenance releases. And like I said you can always roll back. You want to make sure to have a backup of everything, data, encryption keys and config. Most upgrade issues come from when a boot device fails during upgrade.

 

[Apollo]

Hi,
i am running

	FreeNAS-9.10.2-U6 (561f0d7a1)

What is the best/safest way to upgrade it to the latest stable version? I have encryption on drives... and i don't have backup of all data ... as storage is huge... is it safe/possible to upgrade?


thanks

If I remember correctly, there was a change in the encryption format for the geli key.
I have had issues when I upgraded to Corral and later as encryption was not properly supported, as is not recognizing redundnat drives in a RAIDZ-n configuration, causing the pool to loose redundancy. But as mentioned on this post, most of the trouble related to encrypted volumes/drives seem to have been resolved.
I always find it nerve wrecking, though.

As long as you do not upgrade the pool to the newer zfs tags, then you always have the capability to boot from the previous stable version. If running off a USB key, I could suggest you make make the boot drive a mirror by either adding another USB key or better yet a SSD. Your chances of boot corruption would be reduced and this approach will give you an easier path to recovery. A new boot install and loading the backup config is fine but more problems proned, unless you can backup the .ssh and related folders.

If you loose redundancy due to loss of the parity drives, I would suggest you revert back to the previous stable version and let it resilver before moving forward.

I would also suggest to remove the passphrase so that on every reboot the volume is made available ( I think ).
Not having a backup makes it a more challenging task and before anything else, you must remember you shouldn't rush things in.
The migration will look, at times, as if the system is no longer responsive, could be a few minutes to an hour possibly, especially when the pool is being imported. So don't try to force a restart on a wimp as you could jeopardize your data.

 

[phier]

hi.
what about to decrypt the drives before upgrade? is it possible w/out data loss? thanks

 

[Apollo]

hi.
what about to decrypt the drives before upgrade? is it possible w/out data loss? thanks

Not possible. For that the data will have to be replicated to a new non-encrypted volume.

 

[artlessknave]

Not possible. For that the data will have to be replicated to a new non-encrypted volume.

there are reports of having done this, however, it's a really involved, manual, command-line intensive process, where you do something similar to:

1. remove the disk from the pool
2. remove the encryption off the drive (freenas encryption is currently at the device level)
3. force-ably re-add the now unencrypted disk to the pool
4. repeat with ALL drives.

I don't recall where I read that but instructions do exist. it would likely be easier, however, to just get some disks and make a new pool, which might not be a bad idea anyway since that would get you a backup