We had previous topics were direct ZFS manipulation ended in tears.
qutears
Could you go through the checklist below and see whether there are any issues at each step? If possible, please share the results of each step with us, or let us know where things go wrong. (You’ve likely already verified the first three steps, but I’m including them here for completeness.)
Our current guess is that the issue may lie in step 4 — new data may need to be written before data migration is triggered.
Please take a look and let us know how it goes. Thanks!
Step 1 : GUI Set Tiering scheduleDO NOT set min retention
Step 2 : Check crontab setting
0 8 * * * /sbin/zfs_storage_util --tier_migration pool_id=[pool_id] >/dev/null 2>&1
Step 3 : GUI Tiering setting Target tier: Low-speedWrite-buffer
Step 4 : Copy data files into the test folder.
Copy data to the folder (set as write-buffer) from any clients (SMB). Then wait some minutes.
Step 5 : Manual command
/sbin/zfs_storage_util --tier_migration pool_id=[pool_id]
Step 6 : Check GUI
Step 7 : Check zpool command & [reloc] time
[~] # zpool status
I had already done all of those steps previously. I redid them and nothing changed. The moved in/out bytes are all still zero.
However, looking at zpool status (below, pool 2 is the one with ztier we are talking about), it says that the ztier hasn’t run since Aug 10. I have a feeling that this is related the scrubbing that started on Aug 11 which I had paused. Is it possible that ztier doesn’t run while scrubbing? And that somehow when the scrubbing is paused, the system thinks scrubbing is still on-going and thus never starts qtier?
Thanks,
Gaetan
$ zpool status
pool: zpool1
state: ONLINE
scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0 days 00:00:08 with 0 errors on Sat Aug 1 00:00:10 2026
prune: last pruned 0 entries, 0 entries are pruned ever
total pruning count #5, avg. pruning rate = 0 (entry/sec)
expand: none requested
ztier: [reloc] none requested
[smart] none requested
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
zpool1 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_0/disk_0xa_5F8DB4C502540276_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
errors: No known data errors
pool: zpool2
state: ONLINE
scan: scrub paused since Fri Aug 21 14:51:08 2026
scrub started on Tue Aug 11 00:00:56 2026
230T scanned out of 261T
0 repaired, 88.01% done, no estimated completion time
prune: last pruned 1759474 entries, 77673019 entries are pruned ever
total pruning count #11, avg. pruning rate = 2974973 (entry/sec)
expand: migrated 54.8T in 1 days 00:06:55 with 0 errors on Wed Jul 8 07:42:10 2026
ztier: [reloc] migrated 0 in 0 days 01:26:29 with 0 errors on Mon Aug 10 23:06:36 2026
T1:(+0)(-0), T2:(+0)(-0), T3:(+0)(-0), T4:(+0)(-0), T5:(+0)(-0)
[smart] none requested
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
zpool2 ONLINE 0 0 0
mirror-0 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_0/disk_0x1_S6VANE0TB02122_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_0/disk_0x2_S6CKNN0TB03046_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz2-1 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10001_5000039EA8D98686_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10002_5000039EA8D9532A_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10003_5000039EA8D958AD_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10004_5000039EA8D939E5_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10005_5000039EA8D99646_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10006_5000039EA8D9964B_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10013_5000CCA415C31B4A_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10014_5000CCA415C302E6_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz2-2 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10007_5000039EA8D99B3C_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10008_5000039EA8D99349_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10009_5000039EA8D99737_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x1000a_5000039EA8D9977D_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x1000b_5000039EA8D99356_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x1000c_5000039EA8D955FF_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10015_5000CCA415C2493E_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10016_5000CCA415C3D24D_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz2-3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x1000d_5000039EA8D98CD1_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x1000e_5000039EA8D997AF_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x1000f_5000039EA8D97F85_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10010_5000039EA8D969D2_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10011_5000039EA8D99751_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10012_5000039EA8D98DF8_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10017_5000CCA415C3E9F0_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_1/disk_0x10018_5000CCA415C3CAFE_3 ONLINE 0 0 0
errors: No known data errors
pool: zpoolExt2
state: ONLINE
scan: resilvered 7.82M in 0 days 00:00:01 with 0 errors on Wed Jul 1 15:05:54 2026
prune: never
expand: none requested
ztier: [reloc] none requested
[smart] none requested
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
zpoolExt2 ONLINE 0 0 0
mirror-0 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_0/disk_0x1_S6VANE0TB02122_2 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_0/disk_0x2_S6CKNN0TB03046_2 ONLINE 0 0 0
qzfs/enc_0/disk_0xa_5F8DB4C502540276_2 ONLINE 0 0 0
errors: No known data errors
Could you check whether there are any “Started tiering” entries in the event log? Also, have you tried rebooting during this period? If you suspect the scrub may be stuck, a reboot might be worth trying. I’ll also continue following up on this situation with our internal team.
Thanks!
Hi Steve
I’ve uploaded the event log. I think I found something there. You can see I had manually stopped a pool scrub (orange entry) while a tiering was ongoing. I then disabled the scrubbing. After that, the tiering has never restarted. So the issue is likely related to tiering and scrubbing in some weird way.
Thanks,
Gaetan
After I renabled the pool scrubbing the Qtier magically works again! There is certainly some non-documented interplay between pool scrubbing and tiering.
To the best of my memory the sequence of events that triggered this was:
Qtiering is running and pool was scrubbing
Manually clicked “stop” on the scrubbing
Disabled future scrubbing.
Qtier never starts again.
I’m not sure this will be reproducable, but hopefully this will be helpful to someone else in the future.
No more qutears!
Gaetan