Hi there.

I've been excited to move to ZFS for the snapshotting capabilities, so I've been following Spaceinvader One's videos and have converted my cache pool (2x 250GB SSD), my Nextcloud share (2x 2TB SSD), as well as my "Backup" disk in the array (2TB HDD) to ZFS.

I've installed the ZFS Master plugin, and was hoping to start creating snapshots as my main backup, and then using "ZFS send" to back them up to the ZFS disk in the array (replacing my current rsync script).

However, I note in the ZFS Master plugin that, while my cache drive and Backup drive both have all of their top level shares as datasets, the 2TB SSD pool only contains folders.

 

Why is this? (see below for the methodology I used to convert the pool)

 

And what's the best way to convert the folders into datasets? Should I use the Mover to copy the contents of each share in the pool to the array, then back again? (will this automatically make the shares in the pool datasets?)

 

Diagnostics attached, if they're required.

 

More detail on how the 2TB pool was created:

The "pool" was originally a single BTRFS SSD (called 'ssd2tb') that contained 3x shares: one for my Nextcloud data; one for my photos; and another one specifically for the photos I want streamed to a digital photo frame I have.

I bought a second 2TB SSD and formatted it as ZFS, naming it 'pool2tb'.

I then used Midnight Commander to copy the contents of ssd2tb to pool2tb

Once done, I erased ssd2tb, deleted the ssd2tb pool, formatted it as zfs, and added that ssd as a mirrored disk in 'pool2tb'

Does any of that explain why the 3x shares on pool2tb are folders, not datasets? (while the shares on my 'cache' zfs pool are datasets?)

And what do I have to do to convert them to datasets?

Many thanks for your help.

percy-diagnostics-20230718-1428.zip

Edited July 18, 20232 yr by jademonkee

18 minutes ago, jademonkee said:

And what's the best way to convert the folders into datasets? Should I use the Mover to copy the contents of each share in the pool to the array, then back again? (will this automatically make the shares in the pool datasets?)

You can do that.

 

 

Thanks, I shall then.

Is the reason that they weren't automatically created as datasets because I used MC (disk share to disk share) to move the shares to the Pool, instead of the Mover? (just so that I don't make a similar mistake again)

5 minutes ago, jademonkee said:

Is the reason that they weren't automatically created as datasets because I used MC (disk share to disk share)

Not MC, but disk share to disk share, dataset on zfs will only be automatically created when using user shares.

Hi,

Im Stuck with a similar problem.

I have used unbalance to move everything from the disk, format to zfs and move it back. (For this i have removed my 2nd parity, move everythingon and of and after all put it back to be the 2nd parity)

 

Now Array is a dataset and everything is fine. The script also works and every docker is its own dataset.

But on the array I have no dataset.

 

I know why I can't use the folder to dataset script, but not, what I should to do.

Not sure I follow:

7 hours ago, Der Facecrafter said:

Now Array is a dataset and everything is fine.

 

7 hours ago, Der Facecrafter said:

But on the array I have no dataset.

 

Oh, sorry. I was not in a good condition yesterday.

 

On the Cache drive (like in the video from Spaceinvader) All Shares are Datasets and every docker is its own dataset to make individual snapshots.

 

But this is not the case on the ARRAY

There is nothing, except for this one Share, but the Data from this share are on disk 1, 3, 4, and 6

 

 

How did you move the data to the array? IIRC unbalance won't create datasets.

unbalance. What Else.

I move all data from one disk to a 7th disk, Format disk X to ZFS and move everything back.

I used the mover.
Move everything to the array (change all shares to Cache -> Array) -> convert pool to zfs -> move everything back.

But mine looks also way different.

 

14 hours ago, Der Facecrafter said:

unbalance. What Else.

Like mentioned and AFAIK Unbalance won't create datasets.

The only issue here is that folders on a 24tb array can't be moved to a 2tb cache and then back again.

 

I'm going to have a play with https://github.com/SpaceinvaderOne/Unraid_ZFS_Auto_Dataset_Update to see if it can do regular folders on array disks. I believe it can

On 12/14/2023 at 8:59 PM, PhilBarker said:

The only issue here is that folders on a 24tb array can't be moved to a 2tb cache and then back again.

 

I'm going to have a play with https://github.com/SpaceinvaderOne/Unraid_ZFS_Auto_Dataset_Update to see if it can do regular folders on array disks. I believe it can

Did you ever get this script to work on user shares? i have succesfully converted my cache to zfs and used the script to convert all docker folders to datasets but my media and isos share for example won't convert propperly,