XigmaNAS

I'd like to upgrade my home NAS from OpenSolaris to NAS4Free. OpenSolaris has been reliable for me but I'm concerned as it's been unsupported for years. I've been doing a lot of research and I think I have some of the basics figured out, but I'd still really appreciate some help from the community.

My current setup:

I just use my NAS for regular home stuff--photos, documents, home movies, etc. I have an HP ProLiant ML 110 G6 (quad core Xeon, etc.) with 2GB of RAM (which I'm upgrading to 4GB, all ECC). For the last few years I've been using OpenSolaris. I currently have 3 1TB HDs in a Version 22 RAID-Z zpool. They have 2 datasets (only one of which I really use) and some very basic ACLs (just two users, both with full access). The system came with a 60GB drive which I use for the OS.

Backup:

To back this up I just copied the data (currently shared through SMB/CIFS) to my Windows 7 machine and to a HFS+ (Journaled, Case-Sensitive)-formatted external drive through my Mac. This probably isn't the best way to backup, so I have a question about that below.

My plan:

From what I can tell I should just be able to export the zpool, install NAS4Free on the system drive, and import the zpool. I won't be physically moving any of the drives. I may do a test run by installing to a thumb drive before I install to the system drive.

My questions:

1) Is there a better way to back this data up? Should I format my external drive in ZFS? There weren't any errors copying from my case-sensitive ZFS to case-sensitive HFS+.

2) Will my plan to import/export work?

3) Once I import this zpool, what happens to my old ACLs? Will they survive the migration? If so, how do I manage them on NAS4Free?

Thanks for your help!

Since you are already on ZFS it should be very easy, export the pool then import once NAS4Free is up & running.

Your backup is ok for the upgrade but is lacking if you have a large power surge or some other event that damages all your PCs. I would say get a 2 or 3 TB drive to copy your data to then store that drive at work, a friend's house or some other offsite location.

build one all new
transfer the data
keep the old for the back up

my i3 box was built when a lesser one failed [atom PCI]
transferred the data from the degraded pool and then rebuilt for a second spare
I back up to the 3 boxes in rotation as well as a removable drive in the i3

My budget just doesn't support having two NAS boxes, so I'm forced to just upgrade the OS.

Thanks for the help, KenZ71. Do you know how it will handle the ACLs? That's my last real point of concern.

Personally I would consider OmniOS, the best successor to OpenIndiana. Often updated, with LTS, stable, devel branches. I use both OmniOS and NAS4free in my servers.

If you need an interface like NAS4free and you would like to keep a "solaris" derivative, try "napp-it". I didn't like it when it was time to decide: at that time it dirtied the whole filesystem by compiling and installing cmdline tools together with system-wide tools (/usr/bin, if you know what I mean), but maybe it has improved in the meanwhile.

Or continue with NAS4free, of course.

OmniOS has the advantage that you can easily install additional tools on the USB stick so you can add additional tools you may need (IMAP server, CrashPlan backups, ...), NAS4free has the advantage that you CANNOT (easily) install additional tools in the USB stick, so you don't risk an attacker compromising the system: a reboot puts the system back to what it was provided.

OmniOS has much frequent updates, especially security updates. I use OmniOS on my main server for best customization and features, NAS4free on my second one where I want basic functionality without big time effort.

Edit: ACLs in OmniOS should be exactly like in OpenIndiana, being the kernel and ZFS implementation basically the same as in OpenIndiana.

You may also consider NexentaStor, but that is based on GNU userland and not Solaris userland. The kernel (and ACLs?) should be equivalent to OmniOS and OpenIndiana (please check this, I write by heart).
NexentaStor also offers native (not Samba) kernel (not userspace) SMB 2.1. Kernel SMB is multithreaded, Samba is by design single-threaded (in case you care).

I have no experience with ACLs. However after scanning the how to it looks tempting to checkout.
http://wiki.nas4free.org/doku.php?id=faq:0045

Just a guess, but it looks like ACLs started out in BSD so you should be ok.

Well it worked perfectly. I imported my zpool with no trouble. The only tough part was the ACLs--the files didn't want to share over SMB until I ran:

zfs set aclinherit=passthrough tank/local
zfs set aclmode=passthrough tank/local
chmod –R 774 /tank/local
chown -R [username]:[groupname] /tank/local

That reset the ownership and permissions on the file to work correctly with my user accounts.

Thanks for everyone's help!