UFS Migrating vps machine, ufs -> zfs

I have tried to find some simple answer but didn't succeed. If this was discussed before (probably was) please point me in the right direction.

I have beautifully set Linode 2GB machine running FrreeBSD on ufs. I plan to migrate that machine to new Linode 8GB virtual server, and install everything on zfs.

So I have two servers with complete control, ability to ssh into any of them etc. I can prepare any of them in any way imaginable, before I actually start the transfer.

What is the quickest and most elegant way to migrate entire ufs based machine into another with zfs?

Edit: I can find several dd or rsync based solutions for migrating Linux on Linode, no idea how it applies to FreeBSD and two different file systems. rsync based solutions may work in theory.
 
I seriously would not do this if the only access you have is through SSH. And to answer your question: there is no "best way" to perform this because a lot of this depends on your setup.

So, first off: what is your goal, what are you trying to achieve? With that I don't mean "install ZFS", I'm referring to what you hope to gain by installing ZFS.

Alas; a quick way would be to back up your system using dump onto external storage, boot using a rescue disc and then trash your current freebsd-ufs and freebsd-swap slices and replace them with freebsd-zfs. Set up a new pool, restore your data, bootstrap it and you're pretty much done.
 
I seriously would not do this if the only access you have is through SSH. And to answer your question: there is no "best way" to perform this because a lot of this depends on your setup.

So, first off: what is your goal, what are you trying to achieve? With that I don't mean "install ZFS", I'm referring to what you hope to gain by installing ZFS.

I love ZFS so much I would install it on a potato if potato can run it. My intitial 2GB server had too little memory to handle ZFS, that's why I started with UFS. Since I want to get 8GB server which can comfortably run ZFS I would like to finish UFS -> ZFS migration in the same go.

Alas; a quick way would be to back up your system using dump onto external storage, boot using a rescue disc and then trash your current freebsd-ufs and freebsd-swap slices and replace them with freebsd-zfs. Set up a new pool, restore your data, bootstrap it and you're pretty much done.

That's not a problem, I always allocate 1/3 of the offered space to have plenty to spare for backups. So my 2GB Linode has 30GB SSD space available and only one 10MB UFS disk. I can easily duplicate or dump or anything else needed, all on the original virtual machine.

Transfer should not a problem, since both machines are in the same data center I can create small private network between those two. I can easily simulate any non-data-center operation you can think of. I am just trying to find most reliable way to do it.

Linode has solid migration so I can simply upgrade existing machine to 8GB plan, wait for 20 minutes and end up with with 96GB of SSD storage with one 10GB UFS disk. Then I can easily grow that disk to any size I want.

But I'd like not to simply grow the machine. As far as I could find there is not magic wand 'convert this entire bootable disk from UFS to ZFS' command, right?

Edit: migration is also not time critical, as long as it is half elegant. I can create another machine while first one runs, make sure that I did proper migration then change DNS to point to new one.
 
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