Migrating to UnRaid

[Muttles]

Hi Everyone,

 

I am considering migrating my ubuntu 22.04.4 personal server to unraid as I have heard good things.  I had a few questions before taking the plunge and figured it wouldn't hurt to ask.  I current run an Ubuntu server that started as a lab and has grown to be a personal storage server, Plex, Radarr, FoundryVtt, as well as local storage for the house for files and such.  I've been using linux for a long time and and mildly competent when it comes to using it.  The system I have is:

 

Intel  Xeon E3-1200

8 Gigs DDR4 Synchronous 2400 MHz

4 Trays: 3x 8 TB HDD WD Green, 1 empty

1x 256 gig SSD

VGA: MGA G200e [Pilot] ServerEngines (SEP1)

 

I've purchased 3x Seagate IronWolf Pro16TB to add / replace my drives, I plan to keep 1 8 TB drive for more storage .  The current drives where not setup with any Raid and have static mount points.  I've never used Docker however and am a bit intimidated.

 

Few Questions - Firstly, my 3 drives are almost full, using EXT4 partitions.  I've managed to backup 2 drives onto one of the new 16 TB Seagates but am unsure what the best way to migrate my data and start over with unraid.  Can I bring in drives as EXT4 copy data over then wipe and add to pool?  What's the best path to move from the ubuntu server I have to unraid and keep all my data while swapping out drives.  I think I want to end up with 4x drives in the front server bays, not sure if it's worth connecting these 5 year old 8 TB drives externally but if people have suggestions on an easy way to do this it would be great.

 

Secondly how hard is it to work with docker and Unraid?  I'm very used to working from a terminal but not sure how I could link my VPN/Downloads, my plex media store and my standard Samba shares?  I want data accessible across them all.

 

Finally is it easy to setup local shares for both linux, Mac and windows 10/11 for files?  I currently use the server as a dump all for things I need access to across everything?

 

Thanks for reading if you made it this far.