ZFS Essentials: Reformat (ZFS) and or Upgrade Cache Pools in Unraid

foreign guys let's Jump Right In and get started now this video is about upgrading a cash pull or Cash Drive whether physically to a new device or like I'm going to be doing in this video changing the format of the device from what it is now to ZFS thanks to this being recently added to the latest version of unraid on raid 6.12 now physically swapping the cache drive or just reformatting the cache the process is exactly the same now in the last video people were asking is it possible to do an In-Place reformatting of a drive whilst retaining all of the data now I know many people out there are hoping it might be possible to keep all of the data in place either on a cash drive or on the array and have it reformat kind of in the background keeping all the data in place and just converting the file system that way well I'd love to better say yes it is but then I'd just be lying unfortunately that isn't possible but it is actually remarkably easy to temporarily move the data elsewhere and reformat a cache pool or reformat an individual Drive in the unread array to another file system such as ZFS so in this video we're going to be looking at the cache pool and in an upcoming video we're going to be looking at how we can reformat a drive in the array without damaging parity at all so it's quite obvious why we might want to have our cash pull reformatted to ZFS we can have things like our app data or our VMV disks there and use all of the advanced features of the CFS for snapshots cloning and replication but it might not be quite so obvious why we might want just to have say one disk in the array to be ZFS well when we've got two z-pools we can replicate one to the other while I'm not going to really go into it in this video but it's a great way to be able to actually back things up using snapshots and ZFS replication making our server bulletproof but all of that's coming in future videos but for now let's just see how we can create our first C pool using our existing cache drive just reformatting it into ZFS okay so let's jump across onto a server and have a look now you'll see the setup is a little different than the last video I've got a small array of one parity two data drives that are both xfs a cache Drive which is also xfs so what we're going to do in this video change our cache drive from xfs or butterfs to a ZFS the cache drive and there are some really good advantages to doing this now if I look on this drive here we can see that there's the app data share the domain share and the system share so obviously all of this needs to be moved somewhere else so we can reformat this drive as ZFS and then put the data back now of course the process would be exactly the same if in fact we didn't want to keep this cache we just wanted to upgrade it to a larger drive just after the first stage of moving the data off the disk would then shut down the unraid server swap it start it up assign it and then format it in the file system that we want and in this video we'll be looking at both scenarios but let's do the first step first let's move the data off the cache drive onto the array now this is actually really easy to do if I go to the shares tab here and we can see here the shares that I want to move that's app data domains and the system share here so first let's click onto app data and we can see here the primary storage location is set to Cache which is the name of my pool so what I need to do is I need to enable the secondary storage here and that should be set to array and once I've done that I can choose how the Mover performs at the moment when I run mover it will move stuff from the cache onto the array so that's the same as back in the old days when we had use cash yes when mover runs it just moves the new files in that share from the cache Drive which is now our primary storage to the secondary storage the array so obviously if yours was set from moving from the array to Cache that would be wrong just make sure it's set to Move It from the name of your pool to the array and then when we run mover it will move all of the data from that share onto the array so with that done let's click on to apply and done and I'm going to do the same for the domain share I'm going to enable the secondary storage make sure the Mover is set from Cache now remember your pool might not be called cash it may be called something else but basically we just want it moving from the pool to the array the destination should just be the array and lastly let's do the system share here and we can see that set from array to Cache because it's trying to keep everything on the cache Drive so for this share we need to change it from Cache to array okay so we set how we want the shares now but we don't want to run mover quite yet because at the moment the VM service is running and although no VMS are actually running the system files for this are in use and also I've got a Docker container running here my MB containers running so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to settings here and first I'm going to go to VM manager and I'm going to set this to no so it's not running so now it's not running I'm going to click onto done and I'm going to do the same now by clicking on docker and disabling the docker Service as well now you may be wondering why I didn't just stop all the docker containers in the VMS well the reason for that is because when these services are running there's files being used in the system share here the docker the docker image would be in use and for VMS the lib vert file would be in use and that's where the containers or VMS are running or not so now with those stopped all of the data from in here will be able to move if I hadn't done the files would have been in use and they wouldn't have moved off the cache drive and I would have had a bit of a problem so all we need to do now is Click onto Main scroll down to the bottom and click on move and we just need to let move a run and move all of those files it might take a little while if there's a lot of files and we'll know it's finished because the button will no longer be grayed out and we won't see this message here saying disabled mover is running and if we scroll up here we can see that move is working we can see the reads from the cache drive here and the rights here going on to the array disks so it looks like we've got about 74 gigs to move across so I'm going to pause the video here and come back when it's done okay so we can see that move is completed now because the buttons no longer grayed out and if we go to the cache drive here we can see there's no folders present here so all the data has been moved onto the array we can see updated domains and the system share all here so now what we want to do is we want to stop the array and at this point here if we wanted to we could actually shut the whole server down and we could swap this cache drive for a larger Drive so let's look at that scenario now and do that and with the server shutdown we could then remove the cache drive and put a larger one in with that done we then restart the server and with the server started back up it would say that we're missing the cache drive so then we'd select the new Drive that we'd want to use for our cache now obviously you'd probably want to use an SSD this is just for demonstration purposes and before starting the array we could just put the file system to either ZFS or in fact any other file system we wanted to format the cache with and with that done we just have to start up the array we'd be warned of an unmountable disc that's perfectly normal vid check format the drive and we can see here it's going to format the cache and I just click format and now our Cash Drive its file system is ZFS okay so before moving on let's rewind because in my server I'm not actually swapping the cache I'm actually just going to reformat the original one so let's rewind back to there okay so here we are back where we were before movers just run and our cache drive's empty so now I'm going to do is I'm going to stop the array and now with the array stopped I'm going to click onto the pool name here mine's called cache and the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to click onto a raise I'm going to need to type in the name of the pool and mine's called cache so once it's cleared I'm going to go across here to file system and I'm going to choose ZFS and on This Server I'm going to leave the compression off the only reason being is it's an old 10 year old dual core CPU so I think for This Server probably better not to actually stress the CPU at all okay so with that done I'm going to click on to apply and done and now I'm going to scroll down start up the array and it's going to tell us that the cache Drive is unmountable so I'm going to check this box here to be able to format it click OK and then format the drive okay so now on raid's going to format this drive in ZFS okay so there we have it the drives formatted it's still empty just now it's in ZFS now I know what you might be thinking this is all very well and good for a cash pool that only had one drive in it but what about maybe a butterfs mirror how do we go about changing the file format on that well let's go across to another server and we'll take a quick look okay so on This Server here you'll see there's a two Drive butter FS pool here it's a raid one mirror giving me a usable space of one terabyte so just as before all we need to do is to stop the array so with the array stopped just like we did for the single disc pull we click on the name of the pool the top one here and click onto a raise and pop the name of the pool in click proceed and with that done now we can choose the file format so if I was to choose the fs now with the two disks I've got a choice of a RAID 0 which I'm definitely not going to do or a mirror so the mirror is exactly the same as the raid 1 in butterfs just mirroring the two Drives together so if I was to click apply now done and then start the array it would format the pool like that but in fact I don't want to have just a two disc pull because I'm using CFS I can use three drives and stripe the data across so I'm going to add another drive to the mix click on to the name of the pool now I could have a mirror of all of these three drives so I'd have kind of triple redundancy but I'm going to use Raid Z and this will make a raid C1 pull and out of the three terabytes that we've assigned from the three one terabyte drives it will give us a usable space of two terabytes so let's start the array and format these drives okay so there we have it the two Drive butter FS pull converted into a three Drive ZFS pull easy so let's go back across to the server we are working on a moment ago okay so that's done now the cast Drive is CFS of course there's nothing on it all of our Shares are on the main array the updated domains and system they need to be moved back and to do that I'm going to go to shares here and here on the shares tab we can see that move is set to move stuff from the cache to the array for these three shares that's how we move the data here so basically all we need to do now is reverse that is to have move or move stuff from the array back to the cache so I'm going to change that now mover action I'm going to change to array to Cache and I'm going to do that for the other two shares as well okay so it's nice and easy to see what's going to happen this is a nice touch an unraised 6.12 so update is going from array to Cache so's domains and so system so with that done we can now run mover again and wait for the data to be put onto the cache Drive right okay if we scroll down we can see move is finished because the buttons no longer grayed out and if I take a look on the cache here here's my updated domains and system share they've been moved off the disk one which now only has the isos media and a test share okay so now we can start back up the Dock Service and the same for the VM service here and so with that done let's just test out a container let's take a look if mb's working okay great everything's running so as you can see in this video it's really easy to either swap out your cash drive for a larger one or just reformat the one you've got into a different file system so what about upcoming videos well we're going to have a look at actually swapping out an array disc reformatting that in ZFS and doing that without having to rebuild the parity we'll be looking at how we can actually Auto convert inside a share all of the top level folders into data sets this is very useful for your app data so each container can have its own data set allowing you to snapshot it allowing for easy recovery and rollback in case of a problem also we'll be looking at Auto snapshotting and auto replication from data set to data set so keep an eye out for all these videos the first of which should be here probably this weekend and the others coming over the next week or two if you like this video then please hit up that like button subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and share the video with anyone else who you think might find it useful now as always I want to give a huge thanks to all of my patrons and supporters out there thank you guys so much for all of your support without you I really wouldn't be able to make these videos anyway guys so it's getting late here so it's time for me to go but whatever you're up to for the rest of the day I hope it's good and I'll catch you in the next video

Channel: Spaceinvader One

Views: 60,446

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Id: vXF8au5o9Tw

Length: 15min 41sec (941 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 15 2023