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windowsnaszfs

Migrate FreeNAS Data to Windows (over SMB)

My FreeNAS server is slowly dying and before that happens i need to migrate all data in the NAS to a windows server.

The FreeNAS has ZFS Snapshots and i need to restore data from a few days ago to the Windows server.

I have done some research and i can't think of the best way to do this. (i am not linux/Zfs savvy)

So the things i need to do is,

  1. Restore ZFS Snaptshot from a few days ago to a windows Server

I mounted a windows share to the Freenas using mount_smbfs //username:password@server.name/share_name share_name/

I can copy and create files on that share just fine. So I was wondering if it was possible to restore an entire data set from an snapshot to the windows share.

Any help, tips is much appreciated.

Note. I could easily copy all data on a freenas volume to the windows share, but what makes it complicated for me, is restoring data from a snapshot without overwriting the current data on the volume and moving that data to the windows share.

Solution

  • You have two sensible possibilities:

    1. Access the ZFS dataset (shared over SMB) from your Windows Server, then right-click on it in Explorer and choose "Previous Versions". You will get (after a short time depending on the number of snapshots) a list of all snapshots with their dates. You can then either explore them and copy some files over, or you can choose to copy all to another location (e. g. your new share).
    2. Mount the Windows share on FreeNAS like you did, then go to <pool>/<filesystem>/.zfs/snapshot/ (path completion on the shell might be turned off for the .zfs directory, so type it in manually). There you'll find all your snapshots (like you would have on Windows' Previous Versions) and you can copy some or all files over to the new directory.

    I would suggest the first way, because you have the GUI and cannot do any harm to the FreeNAS system this way.

    On the other hand, have you thought about the possibility of rescuing the system? You did not specify why it's dying, but things like hard drives or mainboards can be swapped quite easily without requiring setting up everything anew. Maybe this would help you more than moving the data off to another, unconfigured system?