How to recover a destroyed zfs storage pool

ZFS has one of the cool features that we can recover the destroyed pool if the zpool disk is not used or removed from the system for other purpose. Once we issue the command to destroy the particular pool, Solaris will put the zpool in destroyed mode and it won’t remove any data from those zpool disks.

Note:Zpool destroy is very dangerous command since it destroys the zpool even if it contains mounted datasets.

So the bottom line is accidentally deleted zpool can be re-imported using the below method.
I am destroying the zpool using destroy command.

# zpool destroy data_pool

Verifying that pool has been removed from system or not.

# zpool list |grep –i data_pool

Checking the destroyed pools on this system

# zpool import -D
  pool: data_pool
    id: 9205677892434161971
 state: ONLINE (DESTROYED)
action: The pool can be imported using its name or numeric identifier.
config:
        data_pool   ONLINE
          mirror-0  ONLINE
          c1t9d0    ONLINE
          c2t11d0   ONLINE

Here we are trying to import the destroyed zpool.

# zpool import -D data_pool
# zpool status -x
all pools are healthy

If the above command, may fail, import the zpool forcefully and bring the missing devices online. Go ahead with this, if you have valid replicas in the zpool.

# zpool import -D
  pool: data_pool
    id: 9205677892434161971
 state: ONLINE (DESTROYED)
action: The pool can be imported using its name or numeric identifier.
config:
        data_pool   ONLINE
          c1t9d0    ONLINE
          c2t11d0   UNAVAIL

Importing forcefully

# zpool import -Df data_pool
# zpool status -x
pool: data_pool
state: DEGRADED
status: One or more devices could not be opened.  Sufficient replicas exist for the pool to continue functioning in a degraded state.
action: Attach the missing device and online it using 'zpool online'.
see: http://www.sun.com/msg/ZFS-8000-2Q
 scrub: scrub completed after 0h0m with 0 errors on Thu July 10 15:38:48 2012
config:

        NAME            STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        data_pool     DEGRADED     0     0     0
          mirror
          c1t9d0       ONLINE       0     0     0
         c2t11d0      UNAVAIL     0      37    0   cannot open
errors: No known data errors
# zpool online data_pool c2t11d0
Bringing device c2t11d0 online
# zpool status -x
all pools are healthy

So before importing the zpool ,just make sure that disks/luns are visible from OS side. By doing that you no need to import the zpool forcefully.

Thank for reading this article. please leave a comment if you have any doubt.I will get back you .

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