Hello,

I currently have unraid running on an old dell r620 server. I want to move my unraid over to my old streaming PC which is a lot more powerful. I know you can just swap hardware, but in this case the hard drives will not be getting migrated. The only thing that will be moving is the 10Gb fiber card. What's the best way to do this? I'm guessing a backup and restore and if so what's program does everyone suggest. Also with since hard drives will be "missing" how will it handle that? Is that just boot up and than remove those drives?

Edited February 27, 20242 yr by Loki82

Do you mean you want to migrate the data to other disks in the other hardware? 

 

Do you have dockers or VMs to migrate? 

 

Probably need more details about the two systems. 

Hi sorry for the delay.

 

Yes so the plan is to move my unraid from a dell r620 server with sas drives over to a Intel PC build with sata drives. So I can't just move the drives over to the new build

 

I have 8 docker's and 1 vm along with my file shares data. I want to move everything over to the new build.

 

Just trying to figure out the easiest way to do this.

Can you run both servers at the same time?

Do you have backups of everything important and irreplaceable?

 

If you don't have a backup server might make sense to keep the old server as a backup server.

Ok this is odd..I see all the replies on my phone but not my PC.. strange.

 

Yes, I can run both at the same time.

 

I do plan on keeping the old server as a backup location.

All of your configuration is in the config folder on flash. That is all the settings you have made in the webUI. Do you want to keep some of that?

 

Probably not, since the configuration will be different between the 2 systems. I'm going from 10 drives to 4 drives. Outside of that the changes I've made can be redone in a matter of maybe 10 mins

On 2/24/2024 at 9:58 AM, Loki82 said:

I have 8 docker's and 1 vm along with my file shares data. I want to move everything over to the new build.

The way these are configured is part of your configuration on the flash drive.

Personally, I would get the new server setup and working to my satisfaction.  Keep the old server up and running when this process is underway.  When everything is working, then delete any testing data from the array on the new server.

 

Now comes the tough part.  The data has to be moved from the old server to the new one.  It appears that you will probably be using a 1Gb network.  So figure about two-to-three hours per TB of data to be moved.   (Either unassign the parity drive or use write-reconstruct to get shorter transfer times.)  I would use rsync as it is well suited and virtually bulletproof for this type of task.  (In fact, you can continue to add data to the old server while you are doing the  transfer.  Then when the first transfer is completed, you can rerun rsync and it will only copy over those files that have changed.) 

 

At this point, you are ready to use the new server.  At the point, you could rename the new server with the old server's name.  OR you could change all of the clients to connect to the new server.  That is your choice.  You might want to do some skull sessions to see which way would be easier or has the fewer headaches.  Also think about exactly what kind of a backup role you want the old server to serve-- Online, offline, always on, powered down until 'backup day'...

1 hour ago, trurl said:

The way these are configured is part of your configuration on the flash drive.

ahh ok, good to know. i didnt know that

1 hour ago, Frank1940 said:

Personally, I would get the new server setup and working to my satisfaction.  Keep the old server up and running when this process is underway.  When everything is working, then delete any testing data from the array on the new server.

 

Now comes the tough part.  The data has to be moved from the old server to the new one.  It appears that you will probably be using a 1Gb network.  So figure about two-to-three hours per TB of data to be moved.   (Either unassign the parity drive or use write-reconstruct to get shorter transfer times.)  I would use rsync as it is well suited and virtually bulletproof for this type of task.  (In fact, you can continue to add data to the old server while you are doing the  transfer.  Then when the first transfer is completed, you can rerun rsync and it will only copy over those files that have changed.) 

 

At this point, you are ready to use the new server.  At the point, you could rename the new server with the old server's name.  OR you could change all of the clients to connect to the new server.  That is your choice.  You might want to do some skull sessions to see which way would be easier or has the fewer headaches.  Also think about exactly what kind of a backup role you want the old server to serve-- Online, offline, always on, powered down until 'backup day'...

I have a 10gb fiber network, so transfers will be quick, thats not an issue.

Are there certain directories that need to be rsynced over or just do everything? sorry for all the noob questions, I'm use to enterprise SANs, this is my first storage like this

57 minutes ago, Loki82 said:

Are there certain directories that need to be rsynced over or just do everything? sorry for all the noob questions, I'm use to enterprise SANs, this is my first storage like this

 

When I did it, I only did the data directories as I had setup the Dockers and Plugins prior.  (Remember that I said I would have everything installed and running (and tested) prior to the big transfer.  I prefer to fix and solve issues before I start using a new server as a 'production' server!)

3 hours ago, trurl said:

The way these are configured is part of your configuration on the flash drive.

Open up your Unraid webUI. Anything there where you have a choice or entry is part of your configuration on the flash drive.