Best way to migrate data from old unraid server to new unraid server

[syrys]

Current state:

I have an old unraid server with 10x 8tb drives. I just built a new unraid server with a bunch of 16tb drives (I haven't really started the array or setup any data/apps yet, it's new new). At this moment, I have both servers running at the same time. I do not intend to reuse the 8tb drives from the old server, I have enough new 16tb drives (about 5 of them) at hand for my needs. Also note, old server is running unraid 6.8.x and new is 6.12.x - incase I need to watch out for anything? 

 

What I want to do: 

I want to copy over about 40tb of data from the old unraid server to the new server. What are my best options? I do also like to minimise any downtime (I will eventually fully setup the new server and just swap the two once data is migrated and all the apps/dockers are installed), and I want to do the migration as soon as possible (no huge hurry though). 

 

I could easily copy data over the network. But that's limited to 1 gigabit (I only have a gigabit network and old server only supports gigabit even if network supports it). I understand that I can not put a parity in the new server to speed up copy, but it's still limited to gigabit. 

 

I tried initialising the array on new sever (without parity), and then physically moved (and plugged in) one of the array drives to the old server hoping that I can mount it as unassigned devices to copy data over to it (copy inside the same machine using sata speeds rather than saturating the network), but i was unable to mount the new drive into the old machine (I assume since I initialise it as an array on the new server, file systems are different? 

 

What's the correct/best way here? Are there any tools I can use or steps I can follow? 

[JorgeB]

7 hours ago, syrys said:

but i was unable to mount the new drive into the old machine (I assume since I initialise it as an array on the new server, file systems are different? 

That should work, assuming no RAID controllers are involved, if that's true post the diags after a mount attempt.

[syrys]

52 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

That should work, assuming no RAID controllers are involved, if that's true post the diags after a mount attempt.

 

There are raid controllers involved (but i followed some steps to correctly configure a raid controller according to unraid tutorial like 8 years back - on my old server), but im plugging it directly into a motherboard sata post on the old server.

Can you clarify, if i initialise an array on the new server (without parity), and then unplug one of the drives of said array, then plug it directly on to the OLD unraid server (sata connection directly to the motherboard), should i then be able to click MOUNT on this migrated drive on unassigned devices without doing anything else on the old server (without deleting partitions, without formatting or anything)? If this is suppose to work (it doesnt for me), please give me a confirmation and i will attempt it again tomorrow and post an actual error msg here (i didnt bother because the error felt like it was never meant to work that way, i figured that the array used a different file structure/format or or some config that unassigned devices doesnt understand). 

also note that the OLD server is running unraid 6.8.x (so unassigned devices plugin is probably pretty old - probably havent updated in many years), and NEW server is ... well... NEW (unraid 6.12.x etc). 

[JorgeB]

38 minutes ago, syrys said:

There are raid controllers involved (but i followed some steps to correctly configure a raid controller according to unraid tutorial like 8 years back - on my old server),

That can still be a problem, usually JBOD mode on RAID controllers is still not the same as a true HBA or SAT controller.

 

38 minutes ago, syrys said:

Can you clarify, if i initialise an array on the new server (without parity), and then unplug one of the drives of said array, then plug it directly on to the OLD unraid server (sata connection directly to the motherboard), should i then be able to click MOUNT on this migrated drive on unassigned devices without doing anything else on the old server

This should work fine, except with RAID controller used issues like mentioned.

 

38 minutes ago, syrys said:

also note that the OLD server is running unraid 6.8.x (so unassigned devices plugin is probably pretty old - probably havent updated in many years), and NEW server is ... well... NEW (unraid 6.12.x etc). 

That won't be a problem.

 

Best option is probably to do the transfer over LAN.

 

 

[syrys]

ok, so i moved the array disk from the NEW unraid server to OLD unraud server. clicked MOUNT under the unassigned devices for the 18TB drive, the button changes to "mounting" and then unraid loading animation pops up, then page refreshes and the drive still had the MOUNT button (as if mount failed). The system logs show the following:

 

Mar 10 00:31:30 karie unassigned.devices: Adding disk '/dev/sdb1'...
Mar 10 00:31:30 karie unassigned.devices: Mount drive command: /sbin/mount -t xfs -o rw,noatime,nodiratime '/dev/sdb1' '/mnt/disks/ST18000NM000J-2TV103_ZR53FQDA'
Mar 10 00:31:30 karie kernel: XFS (sdb1): Superblock has unknown read-only compatible features (0x8) enabled.
Mar 10 00:31:30 karie kernel: XFS (sdb1): Attempted to mount read-only compatible filesystem read-write.
Mar 10 00:31:30 karie kernel: XFS (sdb1): Filesystem can only be safely mounted read only.
Mar 10 00:31:30 karie kernel: XFS (sdb1): SB validate failed with error -22.
Mar 10 00:31:30 karie unassigned.devices: Mount of '/dev/sdb1' failed. Error message: mount: /mnt/disks/ST18000NM000J-2TV103_ZR53FQDA: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.
Mar 10 00:31:30 karie unassigned.devices: Partition 'ST18000NM000J-2TV103_ZR53FQDA' could not be mounted...

 

Does that give any insights?

[JorgeB]

Is this mounting the a disk in the old server or the other way around?

[syrys]

15 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Is this mounting the a disk in the old server or the other way around?

This is a brand new drive, i put it in the NEW server and initialised a new unraid array with two drives (this is one of the two) with no parity. then i unplugged it from the NEW server, and then plugged it into the OLD server (SATA directly to the MB), and then used unassigned devices plugin on the OLD server to click mount (what happened then is in the post above). 

long story short, the error is from the OLD server. im mounting a new server's drive into the old server. 

Edited March 9 by syrys

[JorgeB]

In that case the Unraid version is important, it wouldn't be the other way around, update the old server to the newest release, it should then mount the new disk.

[syrys]

4 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

In that case the Unraid version is important, it wouldn't be the other way around, update the old server to the newest release, it should then mount the new disk.

Hmm, yeah thought it was something like that. Hmm, seems a bit risky though, thats one of the reasons im starting fresh with a new build. Are there any good tools that allow backups and rollbacks if the update didnt work as expected? Maybe a tool to take a backup of the flash drive and restore it (assuming its that simple to roll back, hopefully)?

[JorgeB]

You just need to make a flash drive backup before updating, in case you need to downgrade.

[syrys]

On 3/10/2024 at 12:59 AM, JorgeB said:

In that case the Unraid version is important, it wouldn't be the other way around, update the old server to the newest release, it should then mount the new disk.

Updated OLD unraid server with some difficulty. But you are spot on, i can now use unassigned devices to mount the drive. Thank you so much for the help