I have a 6TB RaidZ ZFS array configured on my nv129 based OpenSolaris filer, and I want to upgrade to FreeNAS as painlessly as possible. I remember betas had warnings that they did not support existing ZFS pools - has this changed? I can't seem to find any official statement that this is possible, and I'd rather not risk my array if possible.
I have backups, so I could start from scratch, I suppose, but I'd rather not. Thoughts?
I took a quick look at the latest FreeNAS release (version 8). They are only running something along the order of build/revision 129 of ZFS, where the more current versions are in the 134+ range.
Long story short... FreeNAS will not import the later pools - especially when dedup is in the picture as their build/revision level is still pre-dedup. Major bummer!
If the lack of dedup is not an issue, then you can setup FreeNAS in parallel and then copy the data over via FTP, CIFS, etc. There are a few options in how to copy things over, but no direct imports of the pools unless you happen to be running the same or lower level ZFS build/revision.
You shouldn't have any problems importing your pools from your OpenSolaris system into a current FreeNAS version. It won't auto-import a dirty pool so either export first or you can force an import from the command line. As of FreeNAS 8.3.0 they support zpool on disk version 28. You can upgrade your pool with
zpool upgrade poolname. You do not have to upgrade your pool version. With zpool v28 (or lower) you retain compatibility with any Illumos based distribution (OpenIndiana, OmniOS, SmartOS, etc), FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE or newer as well as Solaris 11 should you decided to leave FreeNAS down the road.