Can I move a ZFS pool to another computer?

Solution 1:

No problems... You can create a pool and use the zpool export option on the system you create the pool on.

Once the disks are attached to the final destination host, you can use the zpool import command to import the dataset.

See: Migrating ZFS Storage Pools

Solution 2:

No problems... unless the OS receiving the pool:

• has an older pool version support than the pool you want to send
• has an older zfs version support than any file system in the pool
• doesn't support the partitioning scheme used to store the pool devices

As you are using Ubuntu, the third requirement is a non issue (both BIOS and EFI are supported and you won't have Solaris on SPARC labels).

If you aren't running the same ZFS implementation on both side, run zpool upgrade -v and zfs upgrade -v on each of them to check if their versions match.

In any case, there is no risk losing data if one of these conditions is not met, zpool will just refuse to import the pool.