Backup NAS - setup and initial replication

[asmodeus]

Hello,

I'm getting a second FreeNAS box and will re-purpose my current one to serve as an offsite backup.
The current box runs 8 x 4TB disks in a raidz2 on FreeNAS 9.10, the new box will be running 8 x 8TB disks in raidz2 on FreeNAS 11.
I plan on having the two boxes in one physical location to set everything up and do the initial replication.

What would be the best way to proceed with this? Any pitfalls/gotchas?
My current thinking:

- burn in new box
- set up FreeNAS 11 on new box
- start a one-time replication from current to new box
- once data is replicated to new box, re-setup current box with FreeNAS 11
- set up replication from new box to backup box and let replication complete

Any advice on the zpool setup for the backup box?

Thank you!

 

[Heracles]

Hi Asmodeus,

The burn in of the new hardware is a good thing for sure.

First point I would recommend against is using two different versions of FreeNAS. Usually, when doing any kind of mirroring, clustering, replication, etc., it worths to do it between two systems as similar to each other as possible. No need to be a perfect match, but a major gap at the OS level is not recommended.

Once the second box is ready to receive the sync, you do not need to do it in 2 steps. Just start a regular snapshot task and when ready, start to replicate. The replication task will catch up with all the snapshots.

The fact that the 2 boxes are at the same physical location will helps for the first sync, but will reduce security until one box is moved away so it will not suffer the consequence of the same physical element like fire or water.

Because the two pools are not the same size, you can not replicate everything server 1 can store to server 2. Here, I also have two different capacity between main and DR servers (see my signature). To ensure I will never have problems about this, I used both quotas (max) and reserved space (min) to fix my HA dataset to a precise size on both sides. That way, I know that everything I put and do inside my HA dataset will be replicated properly and the backup server will never be short of space despite its smaller pool.

Have fun with your setup,

 

[asmodeus]

Hi Heracles,

definitely good to know regarding the OS level. I would like to avoid upgrading the old box due to the effort of migrating FreeNAS 9.10 plugins to the new approach in FreeNAS 11. Does this effectively lock me into using 9.10 on the new box? Upgrading the new box after an initial replication would run the same risk, right?

On the pool sizes, I will have to come up with some way of limiting the amount of data transferred. I like the approach with quotas and reserved space.

Thank you!

 

[Ericloewe]

Why not just move all the disks to the new hardware? Save yourself a few steps...

 

[Heracles]

Hi Asmodeus.

On one side, you are not required to deploy each and every new version when they are released.
On the other side, never doing any upgrade and falling too far behind is not much better.

I would recommend you do the effort to migrate because the longer and longer you will wait, the more and mode difficult and risky it will become.

The DR setup is something new. Your actual plugins is something old. If you do not want to do any effort, you can save yourself with one or the other. For you to have both, you will need to work your own case.

Up to you to make your mind on this one, but I think to upgrade to 11.1 or .2 would be good. If you go up to .2, be careful because many people lost their data. Those with snapshots were able to recover, so be sure to do a snapshot right before upgrading.

Good luck,

 

[asmodeus]

Why not just move all the disks to the new hardware? Save yourself a few steps...

If I understand correctly you mean putting all 16 disks in one system for the initial replication? Great idea! Unfortunately I believe I'm two SATA ports short to pull it off with the SuperMicro X11SSL-CF.

 

[asmodeus]

The DR setup is something new. Your actual plugins is something old. If you do not want to do any effort, you can save yourself with one or the other. For you to have both, you will need to work your own case.

Up to you to make your mind on this one, but I think to upgrade to 11.1 or .2 would be good. If you go up to .2, be careful because many people lost their data. Those with snapshots were able to recover, so be sure to do a snapshot right before upgrading.

Good luck,

I would definitely like to upgrade, but the experiences mentioned do sound a bit discouraging to me. I'm following the 'never touch a running system' philosophy, definitely want a backup before even thinking about touching it. I am inclined to just set up and replicate everything to the new box on 9.10 and then upgrade the new box to 11.2, keeping the existing one as a backup at first.
Once that worked well I can start to work on migrating plugins.

If I've got the same data in both pools that should provide a good basis for speedy replication regardless of direction, right?

 

[Ericloewe]

If I understand correctly you mean putting all 16 disks in one system for the initial replication?

That's a possibility, but I meant that you keep the disks.

If you want to move to the new ones because they're larger, you can replace them in place a few at a time - say first six and then the remaining two. Still saves you the hassle of making sure everything is correctly configured after the move.