Upgrading FreeNAS 9.2.1.6 to 9.10

[PowerComms]

Hi all,

I am looking to upgrade a pair of FreeNAS servers running 9.2.1.6 to 9.10 on SuperMicro servers

Is there any literature that shows which versions you can upgrade from? 9.2.x doesn't have the nice upgrade option on the system menu. I would like to understand the benefits and risks of attempting this upgrade.

Obviously, we would backup our data externally, and backup the NAS configurations..

Any inputs are welcome...

Thanks in advance!

 

[Nick2253]

Assuming you aren't doing anything special or funky (like encryption) with your data, then the upgrade should be pretty straight forward.

An upgrade from 9.2.1.9 to 9.10 is "supported" in the sense that people have done it successfully (though some here recommend upgrading to 9.3.1 in the middle), though I don't know if you can upgrade directly from 9.2.1.6. In your shoes, I would first upgrade to 9.2.1.9, and then do an ISO/USB drive upgrade to 9.10. If you're feeling adventurous, then you probably could get away with a direct upgrade to 9.10. And if you're feeling less adventurous, I'd upgrade 9.2.1.6->9.2.1.9->9.3.1->9.10

Depending on the kind of downtime window, you can probably just image the boot devices, so if something goes wrong, you could just restore the image and be back working.

Just to be thorough, make sure you've confirmed your system is compatible with 9.10. The biggest changes are 64-bit only, a larger boot device, and more memory officially required (though you should have had at least 8GB running 9.2 anyway, in my opinion).

Some reading:

• https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...9-10-firmware-and-no-plugins-available.42469/
• https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/problem-restoring-9-2-1-9-config-to-9-3.25482/
• https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/9-2-1-7-to-9-10-webgui-upgrade-or-usb-iso.43283/
• https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...eed-to-upgrade-ibm-serverraid-m1015-fw.44002/

 

[SweetAndLow]

I would just get a new USB and install 9.10 to that then boot your system and test things out. Then i would upload my config and test some more.

 

[PowerComms]

Assuming you aren't doing anything special or funky (like encryption) with your data, then the upgrade should be pretty straight forward.

An upgrade from 9.2.1.9 to 9.10 is "supported" in the sense that people have done it successfully (though some here recommend upgrading to 9.3.1 in the middle), though I don't know if you can upgrade directly from 9.2.1.6. In your shoes, I would first upgrade to 9.2.1.9, and then do an ISO/USB drive upgrade to 9.10. If you're feeling adventurous, then you probably could get away with a direct upgrade to 9.10. And if you're feeling less adventurous, I'd upgrade 9.2.1.6->9.2.1.9->9.3.1->9.10

Depending on the kind of downtime window, you can probably just image the boot devices, so if something goes wrong, you could just restore the image and be back working.

Just to be thorough, make sure you've confirmed your system is compatible with 9.10. The biggest changes are 64-bit only, a larger boot device, and more memory officially required (though you should have had at least 8GB running 9.2 anyway, in my opinion).

Some reading:

• https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...9-10-firmware-and-no-plugins-available.42469/
• https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/problem-restoring-9-2-1-9-config-to-9-3.25482/
• https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/9-2-1-7-to-9-10-webgui-upgrade-or-usb-iso.43283/
• https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...eed-to-upgrade-ibm-serverraid-m1015-fw.44002/

Great information! Thank you for the guidance.

I have staged two 9.2.1.6 test environments (VMs), configured and upgraded directly from 9.2.1.6 to 9.3.10 without issue using the ISO image option (upgrading via the GUI didn't work). I recognize this is not a directly comparable test to upgrading the actual bare-metal NAS boxes but it helped establish the procedure.

I did re-review my target NAS target on the BSD h/w compatibility list. It looks good however the RAID controller (AOC-SAS2LP-Hi8R) wasn't on the list but these systems have been running for about 18 months without issue. I suspect its not an issue because its not using hardware RAID since FreeNAS is overlaying a software RAID solution with ZFS?

 

[Nick2253]

You usually won't run into a hardware compatibility issue with a higher version of FreeBSD if the hardware worked on a lower version. And I think your controller is a repackaged LSI something-or-other, so I would be pretty confident it would be fine. Obviously, that's not a guarantee, but I'd go ahead with it. Don't forget: if you image the boot device, and it doesn't work, you can just restore the image and you'll be going as you were.

I believe that the upgrade from 9.2.x to 9.10 will prompt you to update your pool version. I would not do this until you've tested the system. When you upgrade the pool version, you can't downgrade, so you're stuck using that version of FreeNAS or higher. Once you're confident the system is working, then I would upgrade the pool. There should be no problems with running an older pool version, but there's no reason to once the current version of FreeNAS is working on your hardware.

 

[txNgineer]

Thanks to all. I am moving slowly from 9.2 up to 9.10 by using the above approach. So far it is going well. I did the GUI update to get from 9.2 to 9.3 and am testing all the pools to see if everything is ok. I will then do another full backup and upgrade the pools. Once that is all working I will repeat the process to get from 9.3 to 9.10.
Very tense, but so far so good.

 

[pschatz100]

When 9.10 was first released, many folks recommended updating to the latest 9.3 version, then going from 9.3 to 9.10. That is what I did. Now that there have been some 9.10 updates, the current build is probably more robust that the initial version was - but if you're not in a hurry, there is no harm taking the extra step.

However, as @SweetAndLow said, you could just install 9.10 and go from there. If your FreeNAS installation is not complicated, this might be the way to go. There won't be any problem mounting the old ZFS volumes.