Best way to clone existing data to new drives/pool using a second system..

[JohnDigital]

Thank you for reading. The time has come to upgrade to larger drives. Currently im running 9.3.1 with 16 2TB drives in 2 8 drive vdevs of zfs2. Im at about 82% so im going to be upgrading my drive size. I would add bigger drives one by one, but I just don't think ill need 16 5 or 6TB drives. So i figure a nice round 10 5's or 6's would be plenty. Getting the bulk of the data should be straightforward enough, but what about my jails? Id love to keep my current configuration in place. Here is my thinking. I have an old Poweredge server that I will put the new drives in, run a second Freenas, create the pool etc, and copy data from current Freenas. Then I export the new pool and install the drives in my current server. Is it this easy? Or will my jails be hosed? Seems if I named the zpool the same name on the second system, the current system might just boot as normal or at least go back to normal after I import the new pool. What do you guys think?

Any and all help or insights and suggestions greatly appreciated.

 

[depasseg]

You've confused e a little. You talk about replacing drives 1 by one (which is possible, but you won't see the added space until all drives in a single vdev are upgraded - in your case that would be 8), but then you also talk about a second system and copying data (which is also possible). So which way are you headed?

 

[JohnDigital]

Well, maybe I am confused. Will I realize added space if I upgrade 1 vdev to 6tb drives? I was under the impression ALL drives had to be the same size. It would appear from your answer that this is not the case. If I can replace 1 vdev with 6TB drives, it seems that this is the way to go. So in the end ill have a vdev of 8 2's and one with 8 6's and roughly 48TB of space? Am I correct?

 

[Mirfster]

It would appear from your answer that this is not the case. If I can replace 1 vdev with 6TB drives, it seems that this is the way to go.

Yes, just remember to replace them one at a time, let the re-silver complete then repeat.

 

[JohnDigital]

Sure. I just didnt realize you could only do the drives in one vdev. Ive never been here before, good to know.

But lets just dig a little for shits and giggles. If I did want to resize my system with only ten drives, doing away with the 2TB drives completely; is the best procedure the one I have outlined above? Using a second system to create my pool and copying over the data. Is it sane to do it that way and not hose my jail data? I have some quite large SQL databases and such that could be exported and backed up easy enough, but it would be quite a pain to reconfigure ten jails. Could anyone comment on how they would go about doing this? Ive kicked about the idea of going to a Linux environment, but the truth is, I have grown to love BSD and the jail system and it would be great to keep everything just the way it is, albeit with fewer, larger drives.

Thanks everyone for reading, and your timely responses.

 

[depasseg]

Yes you can use replication to copy all your data to drives in a different system, and then import those drives into your original system.

I've got a howto move to a bigger pool around here somewhere.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I was under the impression ALL drives had to be the same size.

To be pedantic, there's no requirement for any drives to be the same size, it's just that ZFS will treat all drives in a single vdev as being the same size as the smallest. However, some forum members strongly recommend that all vdevs be identical. I read a post recently stating that ZFS will load-balance writes based on vdev performance, which is probably one reason for this recommendation, but may not be a concern for the average home user.

 

[JohnDigital]

Thank you fellas. I have all the info that I need. depasseg, I did find that writeup, and its almost exactly what I was after. I think I will give it a try once my drives have arrived and are vetted for 100% functionality.

Again, thank you.

 

[JohnDigital]

Ok, just over a month later, I am up and running with 12 5TB, drives in Z3. All worked out very well, with 0 broken keyboards. I did a bit of mix and match to make it all work. I moved to a Supermicro board, new case, Xeon, and RAM, basically a whole new machine. For anyone reading this at a later date who wanted to move all data to a new machine while preserving jails and all data, here is what I did.

• Installed all drives and did hardware setup.
• Installed an identical FreeNAS on the new system to a spare flash drive.
• Tested all new drives thoroughly. Solnet-array, badblocks, and SMART (before and after). The solnet-array test gives a great idea on which drives may not be performing up to par. I returned two drives that were testing much slower than the others. Another drive failed badblocks with 3 read errors, and it too was returned. Then I had to wait for the new drives, and then retest them. You can easily find several how to's and pointers in this forum.
• Made two identically named raidZ arrays on the new system once I was satisfied all drives were 100 percent functional.
• Connected the two machines via the 2nd LAN ports with a patch/crossover cable (10.0.0.1, 10.0.0.2).
• Set up replication according to the FreeNAS 9.3 docs, for both volumes (zfs0, and zfs1), to the root of the volumes on the second system. You might have to move the system volume a few times. Do the jail volume last, if applicable.
• Waited about a week for the data to replicate (21TB). Then for shits and gigs, I did a rsync of my main data pool just to be absolutely sure I had everything. A few new items had downloaded over the week I was replicating, so it was not in vain.
• Exported/detached the volumes on both the first and second systems. (Keep share data, and for the love of almighty, DO NOT CHECK DESTROY)
• Shutdown. Removed the flash drive(s) from the first system, and placed into the second new system.
• Boot up, then configure your network to use the original IP. Then used the GUI to import the volumes.
• Reboot. Then verified all data was there, jails started, plugins ran, UPS was running (I had to change port to ugen 1.3).

To my delight this worked like a charm. All my data was there, shares, config, everything just like I were still running on the old system.

A big thanks goes out to all of you who offered pointers. dpasseg, JGreco, Cyberjock, and everyone else who I sniped how to's from. Thanks to everyone in the FreeNAS community, its a beautiful project. Keep up the great work.

 

[depasseg]

I'm glad to hear you are up and running! Nice job!