ZFS RAID Mirror

[mhari]

Hello,

we start running a FreeNAS-Box with ZFS RAID in mirror-mode with a usb-stick as boot-device. After setting up the raid, the webinterface says that the mirror was setup correctly and it´s "healthy".

After that we checked the functionality in case of a hardware failure - we shutted down the system and plugged off one of the disks. After booting up, the raid was degraded, as expected, but all data was still available from the nas. Afterwards we shutted the system down again, replugged the first hdd and plugged the other drive off. Know we expected all data woud be still in place, but nothing could be found. The webinterface (ZFS info) just gives an error.

Did we get something wrong with a ZFS mirror? Could´nt we run each drive independently in case of failure.

Thx for your response,
mhari

 

[b1ghen]

you need to make the pool healthy again before unplugging the next drive, what you just did was basically pulling both drives of a mirror which of course gets you data loss. You need to start a rebuild (resilver) of the pool (array) before you can pull the other drive.

 

[joeschmuck]

Yes, you messed up. You caused a two drive failure in a two drive system which is not good.

You could run each drive independently. I don't have the answer on how to do that but it can be done. Your data is not lost, it's still there.

 

[mhari]

Thanks for your replies. We tried it the other way round and it works fine.

1. Raid is healthy
2. Unplugging of the first hdd.
3. Raid is degraded, but data is still available. Writing some data for testing purpose.
4. Replugging of the first device.
5. Now the missing part: SRUBING OF THE POOL -> resilvering
6. Raid is healthy again. New data was written to the first hdd.
7. Unplugging of second hdd.
8. Raid degraded, but data is available from the first hdd.
9. Replugging of second hdd, followed by a little scrubing
10. everything works fine

Many thanks !!!!