This came out of an issue I posted earlier on replacing a cache drivee, I had a 1024gb NVME versus your standard 1TB (931GB) SSD so couldn't replace with a 980 evo or a WD black.  Got the answer on that and hoping I can make sure I am crystal clear on the second part of my question since I do want to have an app only zpool (mirrored) and a standard cache drive with no RAID.

 

I have 4 NVME slots on my motherboard, I want to split my appdata and cache drives up.  Just curious what that process would look like now that I am using ZFS on my cache pool only?

 

Stop Docker and VMs

Move appdata and VMs to array

Create new Zpool with two new nvmes (appstorage pool)

Move appdata to new Zpool

Select new ZPool as location for all newly downloaded apps and VMs and primary storage

 

What happens to my current snapshots if anything?  I dont need them and can delete them if needed.  Is there any issue with the main array being in XFS?

 

I also have the backup plug in so I could restore from that as well.  Just not 100% on that since it will be in a different location. What steps do I need to do to move the data?  All my dockers have mapping to /mnt/user/appdata so in theory I should only have to change primary storage on the appdata/VM shares to the new ZPool(appstorage) not worry about mapping docker containers again. 

 

What is the correct or best practice way to move appdata to a new zpool?

 

Can someone confirm this is the process moving forward with changing appdata location while using ZFS or am I over thinking this?

If you don't care about the snapshots you can just copy the data to any other place, using any filesystem, and then copy back, if you want to keep them, you could use zfs replication, but for that the destination would also need to be zfs.