I have a pool (“RAIDZ1”) on TrueNAS on an HP Proliant Gen7 Microserver, on 4 x 4TB HDDs.
I wish to build a new TrueNAS on an HP Proliant Gen8 Microserver.
Would I be able to remove these HDDs from the Gen7, put them into the Gen8 instead, and import the “RAIDZ1” pool into the new TrueNAS?
TIA.
You didn’t mention the version of TrueNAS or if you use encryption. How are the disks are attached to these machines? It is best to post detailed information on your system(s) so we can catch anything before you attempt migration. Your smart array controller may be a problem. I don’t know what the setting options are on those.
AVOID USB
What’s all the noise about HBA’s, and why can’t I use a RAID controller?
You can even use the same boot ssd
Sorry…
TrueNAS Scale 25.04.2.6.
I’m not using encryption.
I’m not using USB for storage (4 x 4TB HDDs plugged into the 4 bays of the server(s)).
That just leaves sorting out the storage controller and if it is set to allow direct access to tthe disks, like a HBA flashed to ‘IT mode’. We just don’t want any hardware RAID interfering as it can cause problems with ZFS. Users have lost pools because of it.
If your controller has a ‘write cache’ installed, it may be best to remove it, also.
Thanks, that’s good news.
I guess I will have to add each of the disks first, and then import the pool that’s on them?
Also very interesting re. also transferring the SSD, but while I do have TrueNAS itself on an SSD in the Gen7, one possible problem with putting that SSD in the Gen8 is booting; I currently have to use an internal USB stick in the Gen8, for booting the Almalinux (also installed on an SSD, with 4 HDDs in the bays) that it’s currently running.
I think the Gen8 would likely fail to boot from the SSD transferred from the Gen7, and I don’t know how I could then cause it to boot that SSD via an internal USB stick instead.
I have HP’s B120i disabled, and AHCI enabled, in the Gen8 BIOS.
Please also see my reply, above, to LarsR, regarding the Gen8 booting arrangements.
It shouldn’t matter if it’s connected via usb or sata. But just in case keep a backup of your config. That way if it doesn’t boot you can simply reinstall truenas, import your config and you should be good.
The Gen8’s SSD, with Almalinux on it, is connected by SATA, but the BIOS boot partition and /boot are on an internal USB stick.
Yes, before each update you’re asked if you want to back up the config file (including the secret seeds for encryption) or you can do it manually under sytem → advanced options → top right corner “manage configuration” there you can download a config backup or upload a saved config file.
Thanks, yes, I found out how/where the config can be saved - which is why I quickly deleted my post above. You must’ve seen it even more quickly!
I installed TrueNAS on an SSD connected to port 5 (“SATA ODD”) of the Gen8, and it was able to boot from that while there were no HDDs installed in the bays.
But with HDDs installed, it failed to boot from “drive C:” and nothing I do with the BIOS settings will make it boot from the SSD.
Previously (as I mentioned above), I had Almalinux installed on the Gen8, and had booted the OS SSD via an internal USB stick, which had the bootloader (/boot) on it; the Almalinux install allowed this to be done, however the TrueNAS install only provides the option to boot the OS via the SSD it’s installed on.
So, I connected the TrueNAS SSD to the internal USB port instead, via a USB-SATA adapter, and now the Gen8 does boot from the SSD.
But I now get the warning from TrueNAS: “‘boot-pool’ is consuming USB devices ‘sdd’ which is not recommended.”
How much of an issue is using USB for the TrueNAS OS? I had assumed that this really relates to using USB for ZFS pool data drives (as the linked post/article above suggests), but how much of a risk is it to use USB for the OS SSD?
And, is the problem with USB related to the USB interface, or the actual USB flash drive medium? (considering that I’m actually using an SSD, not a USB drive).
TIA.
The Problem is related to actual usb flash drives, not ssds connected via usb. Starting somewhere with truenas 12.X (can’t remember the exact version), truenas started to write more data to the boot pool, which in return lead to thumb drives to wear out faster, leading to more failed boot drives
It was in 9.3, over ten years ago, that the boot device became a live ZFS pool.
I think it’s when the “System Dataset” became a thing that writes started to wear out USB sticks.
To this day I still don’t understand what the System Dataset is doing or why it is constantly be written to. You might say “logging”, but the syslogs are decoupled from the System Dataset.
