Upgrading from 9.2.1.7 to 11.1

[something_something]

Hi All,

My freenas has been running on 9.2.1.7 for the last few years and I’m now looking to upgrade to 11.2 so I can use cloud storage & VMs. This is the first update I’ve done so I am looking for some advice & suggestions. I'm running 4 x 2TB drives (mirrored) on a HP Microserver Gen 8 (Celeron(R) CPU G1610T @ 2.30GHz) with 16GB Ram, booted off a USB drive.

To prepare for the upgrade I have

• Created an additional ZPool on an external drive with a replica of critical data (clone created with zfs send | zfs recv).
• Backed up the config database.
• Bought a new USB thumbstick so I can do a fresh install.
• Run a scrub of the 4 primary drives to confirm they are in good condition.
• Verified I have the encryption keys for the drives so I can import the drives on the new install.

I'm planning to

1. Perform a fresh install to a new usb drive. (Keeping the old USB drive for a rollback).
2. Boot with legacy bios as Microserver Gen8 doesn't have UEFI according to the HP forums.
3. Import the ZPool on 11.2 without upgrading it.
4. Setup SMB and other services from scratch using IOCage.

Does that all sound sensible or is there anything else that would be sensible to do? I'm tempted to disconnect the data drives during the install process, to avoid any risk of the install erasing the drives during install process. Is it possible to run the install process without any Hard drives connected?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Ericloewe]

Verified I have the encryption keys for the drives so I can import the drives on the new install.

You should have:

• Key+passphrase
• Backup key
• GELI metadata for each disk

It's better to not take any chances with encrypted pools.

1. Perform a fresh install to a new usb drive. (Keeping the old USB drive for a rollback).
2. Boot with legacy bios as Microserver Gen8 doesn't have UEFI according to the HP forums.
3. Import the ZPool on 11.2 without upgrading it.
4. Setup SMB and other services from scratch using IOCage.

Sounds like a plan (although iocage is only for jails). You'll want to take note of all UIDs and GIDs to avoid having to completely re-do your permissions - you can then create the new users with the same IDs as on the old system.

I'm tempted to disconnect the data drives during the install process

Always a good idea,

 

[something_something]

Thanks @Ericloewe. The upgrade to 11.2 went smoothly and I'm now working on reproducing my jail setup. I was able to use 2 usb sticks (boot media & install drive) on the HP Microserver Gen 8.

You'll want to take note of all UIDs and GIDs to avoid having to completely re-do your permissions - you can then create the new users with the same IDs as on the old system.

This was extremely helpful advice and made the process easier that it would have been otherwise.