[SOLVED] Moving ZFS pools from PVE to TrueNAS VM

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CygnusTM

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Jan 18, 2025
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My main question: If you remove a ZFS pool from Storage in the GUI under Datacenter or with "pvesm remove", does it preserve the data on the drives?

Background: I currently have two ZFS pools attached to a PVE host that i would like move, without destroying any data, to a TrueNAS VM on that same PVE host. The two pools are on drive that are attached to a single HBA in IT mode. My plan was to passthrough the whole HBA to TrueNAS. So far, I've created the TrueNAS VM, installed and got TrueNAS up and running.

When I attempt to boot the VM after passing through the controller, the start job hangs and becomes unstoppable/unkillable. It even prevents PVE from restarting or shutting down. I'm guessing this is because the drives are still used by PVE. I've tried disabling the pools in Datacenter, but got the same result. So now I figure I need to remove the pools from PVE. How can I do that safely?
 
Last edited:
CygnusTM said:
My main question: If you remove a ZFS pool from Storage in the GUI under Datacenter or with "pvesm remove", does it preserve the data on the drives?
Click to expand...
Yes, it only stops using it. No data is destroyed.

You need to export the zpool in PVE before passing it through. You also need to check if it is NOT automatically beeing imported after a reboot.
 
LnxBil said:
Yes, it only stops using it. No data is destroyed.

You need to export the zpool in PVE before passing it through. You also need to check if it is NOT automatically beeing imported after a reboot.
Click to expand...
What would be the correct order of those operations? Remove from PVE then export the pools or vice versa? Or doesn't it matter?
 
My main question is answered now. I was able to remove the pools from storage and export them with no issues. However, the hanging start job had nothing to do with that. It turns out my motherboard doesn't do IOMMU grouping correctly, and that is what is causing the hangup. Now on to researching upgrades or contemplating a bare-metal TrueNAS install.
 
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