zpool physical migration?

[warp_foo]

Good morning folks,

I have an existing FreeNAS 8.04 configuration with 4x 2TB disks in an enclosure. (Intel Atom D525, 4GB RAM, Verbatim 4GB 'Stor-n-Stay' USB boot drive).

I want to physically migrate all four drives to a new enclosure capable of more memory and six drives.

I may not have the right terms in my search string, but I haven't found a HOWTO specifically covering a full physical migration of a set of disks (a zpool) from one NAS to a new home -- without losing data.

I believe these are my options:

1. Backup the NAS to a new target, re-create it from scratch on the new server, restore the files, and re-create the shares.

2. Build a new boot USB, Export the configuration of the NAS to a file, move the disks, and import the original configuration.

For option two, if it's workable, I am looking for the proper sequence of commands to safely stop, export, re-import, and restart the services on a new NAS with FreeNAS 8.2-p1. If any one has information on where that information might be, I'd appreciate it.

Thank you,

m

 

[cyberjock]

I may not have the right terms in my search string, but I haven't found a HOWTO specifically covering a full physical migration of a set of disks (a zpool) from one NAS to a new home -- without losing data.

I am looking for the proper sequence of commands to safely stop, export, re-import, and restart the services on a new NAS with FreeNAS 8.2-p1. If any one has information on where that information might be, I'd appreciate it.

It's all in the FreeNAS manual. You just have to understand what exporting, importing, etc means and be able to figure out the appropriate steps to go from your current to future configuration.

 

[Stephens]

warp_foo, without getting into the issue of what happens when you physically move an array of drives to a new computer, which may possibly enumerate them in a different order than they existed in the original system even if you try to keep it all the same order, my question to you is what are you going to do with the 2 new slots available in your new case? BTW, if a gun were held to my head and I had to guess, I'd think FreeNAS/ZFS will identify the drives by their serial # and use them correctly, regardless of the order they're connected to the SATA ports. To do more than guess, I'd have to do some reading (forums, the manual), which you can do just as well. And it may not matter anyway (read on).

You're moving to a new case for a reason that isn't explored in your post. If the reason is to set up a (for instance) 6-disc RAIDZ2 instead of a 4-disc RAIDZ2 (so you'll have more space), you can't expand a vdev. So even if you could move the 4 discs over and restore all your settings, you wouldn't be able to just expand the 4-disc RAIDZ2 vdev by 2 discs. So if that's what you're trying to accomplish, the option really just becomes back up your data, blow away the pool to clear the disks, move the 4 discs to the new machine while adding the 2 new discs to the machine, boot your new USB containing FreeNAS (nothing to stop you from using a newer release at this point), and redo your setup (users/shares/etc). At least that's what I'd do. Think seriously about which version of FreeNAS you want to use and schedule your build accordingly. FreeNAS 8.3 is in beta and has ZFS v28. FreeNAS v8.2 added a command shell from the GUI (which I love), and some other improvements over 8.0.4.

If you want some other setup, the choices become different.

 

[warp_foo]

Thanks for the replies.

I'll re-read the manual this evening when I get home, but I don't recall a section dealing with migrating a zpool from one physical NAS to another. I might have missed it, however...

Regarding my motives: Yes, I understand that I cannot increase the size of a vdev. I would be adding a second pair of drives to a new vdev.

The main intent is to upgrade to a NAS server with additional memory, and a bit of extra SATA ports to play with caching.

m

 

[cyberjock]

There is no section specifically dealing with migrating a zpool from one physical NAS to another. The manual gives you the know-how to plan a migration based on where you are to where you are going on your own. The manual only teaches you how to fish, it's your job to do the actual fishing and to know how to get it right for situations like this.

 

[Stephens]

warp_foo, if you're saying you want to use the 2 extra SATA ports for ZIL/L2ARC, then your migration becomes easier (since your vdev is staying the same size). As you do your reading, you might want to keep in mind the following path (either for confirmation or rebuttal). Save your config, shutdown, move the drives, move the usb stick, boot, import config, possibly import pool. All that said, are you sure you want to try it without a backup?

The only thing I would initially had a slight concern about is enumeration, but if you pay close attention to this section of the manual, it's essentially telling you it's OK. noobsauce80 isn't brushing you off. It's just that the forum gets lots of these types of questions that are answered in the documentation and people want others to read it and give them the reader's digest version instead of reading it themselves so they really understand what's goin on with their data. I went and looked for you because I'm relatively new to the forum and I'm not burned out yet (and I wanted to know myself). Moving the drives to a new computer is essentially the same as if your motherboard went out and you had to put a new one in. Go ZFS (and the FreeNAS documentation team).

 

[warp_foo]

Thanks Stephens. I didn't put 2 and 2 together on the 'motherboard failure' and being, essentially, similar to what I am doing; a migration.

If all goes well (and I expect it to...), I'll end up with three vdevs: the original, a new one with 2x 1TB drives in RAID1, and a pair of 30GB SSDs in RAID1 for the ZIL/L2ARC.

And yes, I do plan on a backup to a separate USB drive. (I have lost data (photos)...) in the past. Not going to happen again.

Thanks again,

m