Upgrading Hardware...

[Lwb1977]

I set up FreeNas quite a while ago on an older box I had built and the past few days, my transfer speeds have just about died to less than 1mb/s. I can't even watch a movie from it any longer as it constantly stops and buffers. Trying to download straight to it from the internet causes it to time out at about 10-15% due to "network location no longer exists" error. So, those issues aside, I would like to upgrade the hardware in the box, including the motherboard (with new onboard NICs), CPU, RAM and power supply. My question is, how will FreeNas handle this? I have 8 2tb drives set up right now in 2 zpools, connected to the mobo through onboard SATA. My concern is how FreeNAS will handle the new SATA connections to the old disks. Any tips/suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks :)

Currently running:
FreeNAS-8.0.4-RELEASE-p2-x64 (11367)
FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE-p7
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+
4082MB Memory

 

[warri]

This has been covered before, ZFS is completely independent from the disk controllers or other underlying hardware. You can export your pool from the old system (consult the FreeNAS manual of your version for details) and auto-import it into a new installation, or even just switch the underlying hardware without reinstalling FreeNAS.

Note that you should first investigate the cause of the loss in performance. This is often a strong indicator for failing hardware, which needs attention before you upgrade hardware. For this, please have a read through this thread from two days ago, as the topic and diagnosis possibilities are very similar: Extensive Scrub Duration

In short: Check pool status, SMART attributes and make sure regular SMART tests are enabled.

 

[Lwb1977]

Tnanks for the quick response. I check pool status pretty regularly and it is always healthy. SMART is on but I will look into enabling SMART tests. I plan on digging into troubleshooting the performance issues tonight when I get home. But regardless, I really need to upgrade the hardware as everything but the disks are approaching 9 years old. I would like to just switch the hardware without reinstalling freenas, so I'll give it a shot and read through the other thread. Thanks for the help.