calling zfs boffins, newb question re: hardware transfer.

R

reapers_dirge

n00b
Joined
Jan 25, 2006
Messages
57
hi all, was hoping to get a yes no answer or maybe a nudge in the right direction.
i have an amateur zfs (raidz5) set up on freenas sitting on a white box in a rack.
what i would like to do is consolidate the data from the old server box onto a ubuntu server with zfs via zfs on linux.
in essence i am aiming to get my zfs pool/data off the older crapier box and put it on a better box with more resources. essentially getting rid or a 2ru server in the process and getting the functionality of a ubuntu server with a zfs pool for storage plus my old data.
im not too fussed about speed, what i would like is to keep the data and be able to move it from a to b.

can i (and presumably not with out some prior work being done) take the old server out.
build a new server, put the old disks and hba in, fire it up and expect it to work?

i wouldn't expect so, i am open to getting another hba and disks building them on the new server and migrating the data from old to new, scavenge the old parts and reintegrating them into the new server. -but i would like to know if there's away around that for now.

has anyone got any thoughts comments questions etc...
 
Do zfs export before you turn off old sever, and then do zfs import on new one.. probably 'zfs import -d /dev/disk/by-id/' because you don't want it to pickup the '/dev/sda' names.

But anyways I've done this moving from OpenIndiana to ZoL, and it worked. However it it matters what pool version your array uses. Look up what pool version freenas uses and what pool version ZoL supports.

If you want to play it safer though, if you have a bunch of snapshots or something place you want to keep you can use zfs send/recieve to transfer array from old system to new system. Less likely for something to go wrong, and if it does you sitll have old server working. Use this though instead of like cp/rsync.
 
reapers_dirge said:
can i (and presumably not with out some prior work being done) take the old server out.
build a new server, put the old disks and hba in, fire it up and expect it to work?

i wouldn't expect so, i am open to getting another hba and disks building them on the new server and migrating the data from old to new, scavenge the old parts and reintegrating them into the new server. -but i would like to know if there's away around that for now.

has anyone got any thoughts comments questions etc...
Click to expand...

Yes, all things being equal, you can do this (one of the beauties of ZFS)!

Obviously the HBA has to be supported (though if there aren't too many disks you can use the motherboard ports).

ZoL supports up to v28 pools, so you should be OK on the pool version front.

Personally I'd install the new system, and then install Ubuntu and ZoL before I even connected these data drives - then check Ubuntu sees all the drives OK before attempting the zpool import.
 
Minor nit, you seem to be confusing raid5 with raidz (else not sure what you meant by raidz5?)
 
oh i thought there was a like zraid 5 and zraid 6 or some convolution/iteration of those words and numbers. it's zraid with one disk for parity, if that's more accurate.

anyway thank folks, things i will need to check before migrating:
ZoL supports current HBA.
ZoL supoprts Version Pool should be okay on this i think the build was made in 2010 but i need to check once im in front of the box.
Back up super vital important stuff.
Note the prep commands, i.e zfs export etc, then migrate ahoy!

thanks everyone, very helpful stuff.
 
madrebel said:
i thought i read ZoL has send/receive problems. confirm/deny?
Click to expand...

Seems to work for me between Solaris and RHEL w/ZoL. At work I have servers running Solaris and using snapshots + send/recieve to mirror with backup servers running RHEL w/ZoL. I don't know of any issues we've run into. This setups been running for a few months now, send/recieve done every 5 minutes. Oh and we run zfs-0.6.0-rc9, fwiw.
 
Last edited:
reapers, roughly:

raidz = raid5
raidz2 = raid6

(this is only wrt redundancy - the performance characteristics are NOT the same.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top