Re: Moving ZFS root popol to a virtual server was: ZFS: Suspended Pool due to allegedly uncorrectable I/O error

On 8/24/24 20:03, Pamela Ballantyne wrote:
> Many thanks to David Christensen, Ronald Klop, and Peter Much for answering
> my plea for help.
> 
> Further reviewing the available evidence,  it seems that the most likely
> cause of the problem is someone at the data center
> removing the disk drives from our server.  This was probably accidental,
> not malicious. I have reported this to the hosting company, but
> I'm not expecting much.
> 
> It is ancient hardware, circa 2011. Although it still performs decently. It
> is probably time for an upgrade, particularly
> since the hosting company is dropping support for bare metal servers.
> 
> I am not sure how to move the existing root pool to a virtual server. I've
> tried a few simulations with VirtualBox, creating
> a source server and a target. The pools get moved, but the target server
> never boots (even when I remember to set bootfs).
> Worse, the target disks are reported as being corrupted each time I do it.
> 
> Once again, any experience/advice here would be very much appreciated.
> 
> Thank you again,
> Pammy


A networked version control system is incredibly useful for system 
administration.  If you do not have such, I highly recommend it; both 
for this project and for everything else going forward.


I have considered migrating an OS instance from a physical disk to a VM 
(or vice-versa) a few times, but always decided to do a fresh install on 
the intended target.


I would build a fresh VM, install fresh software, and migrate 
configuration, data, and services from the old server to the new VM. 
Additional details include scheduling, network settings, validation, 
backup, and rollback.


David