Upgrade HP Microserver N40L QZ160A FreeNAS 8.3.0 to current best stable release

[BanksiaBoy]

I have an HP Proliant Microserver N40L QZ160A, running
FreeNAS 8.3.0 ~ FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE-p4 (FREENAS.amd64) #0 r241984M: Wed Oct 24 00:57:10 PDT 2012
It has a single pool of a mirror of 2 x 640 GB Samsung Drives.

I want to upgrade to current best stable release of FreeNAS - I’m guessing 11.2. Recommendations please.

I’m planning target hardware will be the same HP N40L, with 4 x Western Digital Red WD30EFRX (already purchased) in ZFS RAID-Z2.

I want to be very careful and backup as a replicated pool on a Toshiba P300 2TB whch I have reserved for this. I would then remove the mirrored drives and put them to one side. and use the Toshiba to transfer back to the target RAID-Z2.

Also, I want to keep all snapshots. The correct command for this please

Q: What is the least scariest way of backing up?
a. I have an Ubuntu 18.04 box that I can mount the backup drive into, and possible replicate my pool over the network.
b. I could shut my the current FreeNAS box down, insert the Toshiba and replicate over the SATA bus.

Is replication over network the safest? Suggestions please.

Motherboard make and model: HP ProLiant MicroServer ‘N40L’ QZ160A
CPU make and model: AMD Turion™ II Neo N40L Dual-Core Processor
RAM quantity: 2 x 4GB ECC
Hard drives, quantity, model numbers, and RAID configuration, including boot drives:
one pool comprised of 2 x SAMSUNG HD642JJ 640GB in a mirror.

The boot-drive is one of 2 ‘SanDisk Cruzer Fit 1.26’. I cannot remember which, and I don't know how to find out without trying a reboot after removing one.

camcontrol devlist <SAMSUNG HD642JJ 1AA01112> at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (pass0,ada0) <SAMSUNG HD642JJ 1AA01112> at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (pass1,ada1) <SanDisk Cruzer Fit 1.26> at scbus6 target 0 lun 0 (pass2,da0) <SanDisk Cruzer Fit 1.26> at scbus7 target 0 lun 0 (pass3,da1) ~# zpool status pool: first_volume state: ONLINE scan: scrub repaired 0 in 3h22m with 0 errors on Thu Jul 4 19:35:12 2019 config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM first_volume ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror-0 ONLINE 0 0 0 gptid/105c5eff-4416-11e2-bc34-a0b3cce4eaf4 ONLINE 0 0 0 gptid/10dea597-4416-11e2-bc34-a0b3cce4eaf4 ONLINE 0 0 0 errors: No known data errors History for 'first_volume': 2012-12-12.15:40:34 zpool create -o cachefile=/data/zfs/zpool.cache -o autoexpand=on -O aclmode=passthrough -O aclinherit=passthrough -f -m /first_volume -o altroot=/mnt first_volume mirror /dev/gptid/105c5eff-4416-11e2-bc34-a0b3cce4eaf4 /dev/gptid/10dea597-4416-11e2-bc34-a0b3cce4eaf4 2012-12-12.15:40:35 zfs inherit mountpoint first_volume 2012-12-12.15:40:35 zpool set cachefile=/data/zfs/zpool.cache first_volume 2012-12-12.15:40:40 zfs set dedup=off first_volume [...]

Hard disk controllers

Code:

ahci0@pci0:0:17:0:    class=0x010601 card=0x1609103c chip=0x43911002 rev=0x40 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'ATI Technologies Inc. / Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.'
    device     = 'SB700 SATA Controller [AHCI mode]'
    class      = mass storage
    subclass   = SATA

Network cards
HP Manual reports: ‘Embedded NC107i PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Server Adapter’

# pciconf -lv | grep -A1 -B3 network bge0@pci0:2:0:0: class=0x020000 card=0x705d103c chip=0x165b14e4 rev=0x10 hdr=0x00 vendor = 'Broadcom Corporation' class = network subclass = ethernet






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[BanksiaBoy]

I'm sorry, to me, this doesn't seem like a weird request for help. Why no responses?

I want to upgrade my version of FreeNAS and my disks at the same time. I'm changing from a 2x mirror to a 4x zfs raid-z2. The new pool will use all 4 disk slots. So I need to backup and restore from external storage. I don't want to change the existing mirror pool. I want the new system to retain all the snapshots of the old.

I have provided every detail requested in the posting guidelines.

 

[silverback]

One suggestion would be to create a mirrored pool with two of the new disks and use zfs send to replicate your data. After you have removed the old drives you can add another mirrored vdev to your new pool. Not as safe as z2, but a bulletproof way to replicate your data.

 

[BanksiaBoy]

What I plan to do: (maybe)

I am going to copy my 8.30 2 x 640GB disk mirror to a new disk installed in the 8.30 box using send. It’s quick and doesn’t need mbuffer for performance.
Removing, and importing that new disk into my Ubuntu 18.04 with zfs.
Removing the mirror disks from my 8.3 and putting them on the shelf.
Doing a fresh install of 11.2 to the box, with no data disks. Upgrade too messy. Lost the login. God knows what else.
Shutdown, put 4 new disks in now 11.2 box.
Make a new RAID-Z2 of those 4 x 3TB disks.
Send the pool from Ubuntu zfs to the z2 pool on FreeNAS 11.2 over local gigabit Ethernet using mbuffer.
Upgrade the pool

Simulated all of this using VMware player.

Could have done it with 2x2x mirror but I chose safety. Speed might have been nice.

 

[BanksiaBoy]

One suggestion would be to create a mirrored pool with two of the new disks and use zfs send to replicate your data. After you have removed the old drives you can add another mirrored vdev to your new pool. Not as safe as z2, but a bulletproof way to replicate your data.

I ended up using your strategy. I'll set up an external backup. Performs quite well.

 

[BanksiaBoy]

I reported problem with FreeNAS 11.2 on N40L using SanDisk. Fix scheduled for release in 11.3;
FreeNAS 11.2 U5 seems to be running nicely on ye olde boxe.