Intro: was never big on r/ZFS, but I have been using it for years in my homelab with Trunas, and recently been exploring ProxMox and Ceph. Been in IT for about 15 years, work mostly likes Microsoft stuff and I keep it fresh with as much open source fun at home as I can make time for.
This story is the product of exhaustion and shortcuts costing time and sanity.
Got fancy with the vlans and lost access to the web console, no pings either. Deleted the interface config to start over, still no dice.
Found the setting to wipe all config:
- What I know I should do: look it up before doing the thing.
- What I thought: It’s a home lab, Bombs away!
System came back up, no pools, no plugins, like a fresh build, almost like it had never been configured. Imagine that.
No problem, the data is still there, just need to recompose the pool and restore from all those replicated snapshots I definitely have on the secondary server.
I make a new pool.
The secondary server has been OFFLINE for months. And the last several snapshots failed anyway.
Got a static file level backup on an external drive that I made about a year ago. So that is restoring.
ShouldaCouldaWoulda:
Only then. After making the new pool and successfully finding the data to put back. I remember that I could have restored the configuration backup that I made a few months ago.
3-2-1 people, and don’t forget to backup those configs.