Question: Is uploading config files a good way to clone FreeNAS installations?

[Vitalius]

Hi guys,

I was just wondering, what is the best way to create nearly identical FreeNAS machines for redundancy and backup purposes?

My plan, without insight into it, would be to simply make 3 hardware identical machines, set up one fully, then import it's config file to the other two and change their IP addresses.

Is that acceptable, or is there something else that must be unique to each FreeNAS installation that a config file carries with it?

I can't imagine anything that would be like that, except for maybe encryption keys and things of that nature. Maybe hardware IDs being different would mess things up (i.e. MAC addresses for ethernet ports being different). But I'm not sure.

Has anyone tried something like this?

Thanks,
Vitalius

[AlwaysFSX]

Mind says yes. Brain says no because technology just doesn't work like that.

[Chriz6097]

the only thing that come to mind is this

 

[AlwaysFSX]

the only thing that come to mind is this

That's missing a few box fans to be truly professional

[alpenwasser]

I can't really speak for FreeNAS, but I can say that I have been cloning

Linux configs like that for years. Some stuff you need to change between

systems (UUIDs, hostnames, make sure all device names in the copied files

are consistent with the actual device names on the machine), but it has

been working pretty reliably for me.

It's not fire-and-forget (some editing is still required), but almost.

[Vitalius]

I can't really speak for FreeNAS, but I can say that I have been cloning

Linux configs like that for years. Some stuff you need to change between

systems (UUIDs, hostnames, make sure all device names in the copied files

are consistent with the actual device names on the machine), but it has

been working pretty reliably for me.

It's not fire-and-forget (some editing is still required), but almost.

It's close enough to make it worth it, in other words. 

Hmm, what would UUID's mess with? I'm not sure what those are, or how to edit them.

[IdeaStormer]

@Vitalius you need a configuration management app to do that much more efficiently and automatically than a human can.

 

Apps such as:

 

CfEngine,

Puppet,

Chef

 

as a couple examples off the top of my head, look here for more : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Configuration_management

 

With at least CfEngine you can have as custom a similar config as possible, like same Samaba shares but different name of the share. It does have a learning curve though but once running your systems will be well configured and you can change settings on all by only editing one file on the CfEngine server.

 

If that is too much then it will be up to you to physically go check that the files are identical with their own options set per server name/ip address.

[alpenwasser]

It's close enough to make it worth it, in other words.

It will obviously depend on how many files you need to copy and how

many of those you need to edit manually afterwards, but for me I can

usually just copy my home folder's dot-directories and that's it

(which is why I don't really use any helper tools as @IdeaStormer

has suggested, though that's generally not a bad idea IMO).

Hmm, what would UUID's mess with? I'm not sure what those are, or how to edit them.

Universally Unique Information Identifier. Usually you might encounter them

in your bootloader config or in your /etc/fstab. They will be unique to each

partition (unless you just mirror them with dd IIRC), so if you copy any

files refering to your partitions by their UUID you will need to modify

those files.

Come to think of it, I haven't actually done that in quite a while though.