ZFS Pool Upgrade

[yu130960]

I am using an ESX(i) AIO with the latest appliance posted by Gea napp-it-14b Everything is working fine but I noticed on my older pools that I have imported into the new appliance I am getting the following messages:

pool: tank
state: ONLINE
status: Some supported features are not enabled on the pool. The pool can still be used, but some features are unavailable.
action: Enable all features using 'zpool upgrade'. Once this is done, the pool may no longer be accessible by software that does not support the features. See zpool-features(5) for details.

A new pool that I created does not have this message so I assume it has been created with the latest pool version (28v5?). Couple of questions:

1. Should I upgrade my existing pools? I have always been with OmniOS and napp-it and am not really concerned about exporting/importing elsewhere unless someone can tell me there is something I am missing;

2. How to upgrade the pools in napp-it? I imagine it would be the simple CLI task

zpool upgrade -a

 

[sboesch]

You should be fine as long as you do not plan on using previous zfs versions with the pools.

 

[yu130960]

Thanks for that, so is the recommendation to upgrade the pools?

 

[sboesch]

Depending on the version you may get some features.

Thanks for that, so is the recommendation to upgrade the pools?

 

[ZzBloopzZ]

Did you end up upgrading the pool version yu130960? I am in the same boat. I have only used OmniOS, and plan to stick with it unless they stop development some day.

My understanding is that it uses OpenZFS, and Solaris uses a propitiatory ZFS for the later versions thus they are incompatible. My pool is currently v28. Perhaps I should just not upgrade since everything is working fine? How can I tell if my ZFS is v5 or v6?

Thanks!

 

[gea]

Only Oracle Solaris can create pool >28 and zfs v6.
V28/5 is the compatible version with Solaris

To check in napp-it
- click on poolname in menu pools for details
- click version in menu pools to update

- cklick on filesystem name in menu filesystems for details of a fs

 

[TeeJayHoward]

OmniOS [...]
My understanding is that it uses OpenZFS, and Solaris uses a propitiatory ZFS for the later versions thus they are incompatible.

Solaris uses ZFS. OmniOS, SmartOS, IlluminOS, FreeBSD, ZFSonLinux, etc all use their own version of ZFS based on the official Oracle/Sun ZFS codebase as of pool v28, zfs v5. When Oracle took over, they nixed the community sharing, leading to the splintering of ZFS. Each of the folks who started up a ZFS project added a few features of their own to the code. These features are generally not compatible across systems. Meanwhile, Oracle continued ZFS development on their own.

What you really need to know:

Want to keep your pool compatible? Use v28/v5.
Need a feature? Upgrade the pool and remember that you're stuck with that OS forever.

I would not recommend upgrading unless there's a specific feature you require. It's not faster. It's not better. It's just incompatible, and there's no way to undo it once you've done it. (Unless you're talking about Oracle's ZFS v6, which actually IS faster.)

 

[gea]

The problem:
There are now two lines of further incompatible ZFS developments:
- Oracle with improvements regarding encryption and some performance enhancements like resilver time
- OpenZFS/Illumos with improvents like LZ4, KVM and other features and its OpenSource

If you stay at pool 28/v5, you cannot use either improvements so this is not an option.
You must decide between.