How To work with datapools
Important note
This is a demo system that intended to be used for tests and demonstration of the ZFS capabilities only. Use it at your own risk with no any warranty.
DO NOT USE this ISO in production as well as for critical infrastructure systems!
Open your favorite browser and type following URL: https://IP_ADDRESS, where IP_ADDRESS is a real address of your system.
Login to the Argo Web Management System using your credentials.
Expand the Hardware spoiler and click the ZFSMGR link. You will be redirected to the module which was designed to manage disk pools (zpools) and ZFS file systems (datasets), that can be created on these disk pools. For switching to desired operation, there are 2 tabs with corresponding names presented in the central frame of the window.
To manage disk pools, select the Pool Manager tab. The list of disk pools that already configured in the system will be displayed in the working area of the tab.
To get the detailed information about certain disk pool, click on the link with the name of the pool.
To create a new disk pool, return to the list of pools and click Create a new pool button located under the list. New form will be opened:
There are 2 ways of adding a disk pool to the system:
- Create a new disk pool of the certain type and with the selecting of unused system's disks
- Import an existing pool (for example, in case of migration data pool between systems) and which was previously prepared with the export operation.
To create the NEW disk pool:
Enter the name of the pool in the appropriate form field:
Please note
- The name of the zpool can only consist of Latin alphanumeric characters and an underscore ( _ ), hyphen ( - ), colon ( : ) and period ( . ).
- First character of a pool must be a letter.
- The maximum length of the name is 255 characters.
- The use of Cyrillic, as well as other non-mentioned characters in the pool name - is prohibited and will cause an error when creating a pool.
- It is not allowed to use names starting with: mirror, raidz, raidz1, raidz2, raidz3, spare, as well as using special name - log.
Select the type of pool to create. Possible types are listed in the following table:
| Тип пула | Описание |
|---|---|
| stripe | Simple disks' concatenation to increase the capacity and performance. |
| mirror | Disks' mirroring for the data availability and safety |
| raidz | The basic level of ZFS implementation |
| raidz2 | Advanced level of ZFS with increased reliability |
| raidz3 | The most reliable ZFS implementation |
Mark the disks that you wish to add to the new disk pool by clicking the checkbox left to the disk name
Please note
- The list shows ALL disks existed in the system, including disks that already used in other disk pools. Be careful when choosing a disk: if you choose a disk from an existing disk pool, an error will be displayed at the creation step and disk pool will not be created.
- The disks may contain service information about partitions and data pools, which disks was earlier a member of. In order to avoid errors when creating a disk pool, it is recommended to clear such information. To do this, you need to select the necessary disk (or disks) and click the Clear label button below the list of disks.This operation will clear the meta information and partitioning on the disk(s) became prepared for further usage.
After completing the form, click the Create button
Ensure that the new disk pool is displayed in the list of available pools and the health status is ONLINE
Import of the existing disk pool:
Please note
- To proceed the import a disk pool operation, you need to know the exact name of disk pool which it has when was previously exported.
- The rest of the form parameters do not matter when importing zpool, since an existing pool is imported with previously defined sets of parameters.
In the example below it is assumed that the exported disk pool has the named test02.
Click the Import the pool button and ensure that the operation completed successful - imported pool is presented in the list and has ONLINE health status.
To delete a disk pool, switch to the list of existing pools and click on the link with its name.
Click the Destroy this pool button located below the form with detailed information about the pool.
Attention
- This operation will destroy all datasets created on this disk pool, as well as delete the data located on these datasets!
- After deleting the pool, data recovery is IMPOSSIBLE!
Read the warning carefully and click Destroy button if you agree and understand the consequences of this operation.
The current data pool will be deleted. Make sure that it is not presented in the list of available pools.
