Advise on TrueNAS Scale Migration Strategy to new Hardware, but with ZFS pool rebuilt

TrueNAS General
1

Hello,

I’m thinking about the best migration strategy of my TrueNAS Scale Server.

I currently run TrueNAS-SCALE-23.10.2 on the following hardware and I have tested the new parts with Dragonfish Beta.

Currently 16TB of Data to be migrated

  • Asrock Rack X470DU with 2700X
  • 4x32GB RAM ECC
  • 750W Power Supply
  • Asus Hyper M.2 PCIe3.0 V2
  • 250GB NVME for OS
  • Intel X710-DA2
  • 4x 16TB Toshiba as striped mirror
  • 2x Micron 7300 Pro 960GB mirrored as special vDev (metadata) in Asus Hyper M.2
  • no L2ARC, no SLOG
  • 2x Micron 7300 Pro 960GB mirrored for VMs in Asus Hyper M.2 (very power hungry)

“New Server parts”

  • Gigabyte MC12-LE0
  • Ryzen 4650G
  • 4x 16GB ECC
  • 4x Optane P1600X
  • HP H220 HBA
  • 10x 4TB SATA & SAS HDDs
  • Intel X520-DA2
  • Asus Hyper M.2 PCIe 4.0

New Main Fileserver (as Gigabyte with 4650G is less power hungry) - main Objective: power efficient Fileserver with fast access via 10Gbit with SMB:
*TNS Dragonfish - pool needs to be rebuilt

  • Gigabyte MC12-LE0
  • Ryzen 4650G
  • 4x32GB RAM ECC
  • 750W Power Supply
  • Intel X710-DA2
  • 4x 16TB Toshiba as striped mirror
  • 250GB NVME for OS
  • 2x Optane P1600X mirrored as special vDev (metadata) in Asus Hyper M.2 PCIe 3.0
  • no L2ARC, no SLOG planned

New Backup Server:

  • TNS Dragonfish
  • Asrock Rack X470DU with 2700X
  • 4x 16GB ECC
  • HP H220 HBA
  • 250GB NVME for OS
  • 10x 4TB SATA & SAS HDDs & RAIDZ2
  • Intel X520-DA2

As you can see, I intend to swap of platforms - my current thinking for migration:

  • setup server with Gigabyte MC12-LE0 and 10x 4TB SATA & SAS HDDs & RAIDZ2
  • backup all data from current server (replication?) - advise requested
  • Set up new backup Server with X470D4U and add 10x 4TB SATA & SAS HDDs & RAIDZ2 pool
  • If all data are present - rebuilt new main fileserver (as I rebuilt with Optane drives and I need to rebuilt - this time with correct small block size (8Kb)) - during that time - my only copy of the data is on the new backup server
  • Syncronize data from backup server to main server - advise requested

Does this workflow makes sense? Where are the major risks

Thank you for your input
Alexander

2

My only advice is that if you’re looking to actually measurably reduce power consumption, switch your HDDs to something larger (four 10TB drives will consume a lot less power than ten 4TB drives).

I think rsync would work fine over your network for the small amount of data you’re talking.

3

I hope this is the "Pro"version, to match ECC RAM.

The plan makes sense, though I would personally set up the four 16 TB drives as raidz2 and bring in a third SSD as special vdev for better resiliency.

As for backup, with two TrueNAS systems, replication is the best way. Define your schedule and create suitable periodic replication tasks. The first run will do the backup, subsequent runs, the synchronisation. What do you need advice about?
I would actually burn-in the MC12-LE0 with CPU and RAM, then move the main pool, boot drive and NIC in there—the system should just come up like nothing happened; if not, at worst you’re looking at a trip in settings to redo networking…