Hi all! I have a long-running media server (built in 2015!) that I use for file storage, an Emby server, plus related media download and management apps--Sonarr, Radarr, sabnzbd, etc. This server is based on Ubuntu 18.04, and I have been using Snapraid + MergerFS to pool an assortment of odd drives I've accumulated over the years, with all of the software in docker containers controlled by docker-compose. Recently, the motherboard died and I am going to rebuild the machine. I don't have as much time for tinkering on these sorts of projects as I once did, so unraid is super appealing vs doing all of this manually. That said, I am hoping that I can rebuild this without having to start all of the config and such from scratch. To that end, I have a few questions I am hoping someone can help with before I get too far down this path:

 

• As noted, I have a bunch of differently sized drives--currently 4x 8TB drives (two were being used as parity drives), plus a 4TB and 3 3TB drives. All of these are formatted EXT4. MergerFS provided the pooling for these drives, so in the absence of MergerFS, they all look like individual drives with misc files on them.
  • Does unraid also support pooling dissimilar drives such as this? Or am I going to have to have similar sized drives to pool them?
  • Is there a way to migrate the data on these drives to a new unraid server? I would greatly prefer not to loose the data on them (or have to re-download, which would take forever).
• All of the user applications were previously in docker containers. Some of them, such as the emby server, have a great deal of data I would prefer not to loose (specifically thinking of my emby media database and played/unplayed/date added metadata).
  • Is there a way to install these apps via docker in unraid and keep this metadata? Presumably I could install via unraid and then just copy my appdata files from the old drives to the new location in unraid?
  • Can I migrate the docker containers wholesale, or do I need to install via unraid first?
  • I know that unraid has its own docker orchestration software--is this similar to docker-compose? Is any of the config text-editable?

 

I appreciate the help!

10 hours ago, dessias said:

Does unraid also support pooling dissimilar drives such as this?

Yes.

 

10 hours ago, dessias said:

Is there a way to migrate the data on these drives to a new unraid server?

You'd need at least one empty drive to migrate the data, then it could be done one at a time.

Thanks! About what I thought re: copying over the data. I have dual parity drives in my current setup so presumably I could use one of those as the first empty drive, start copying over, and then when done designate two of the 8GB drives as parity.

 

Any thoughts on the docker questions?

I'd recommend setting up a fresh instance of each container, that way you can see how the path interactions and variables are set up, along with where the data expects to live on Unraid. Once you have a handle on that, it should be relatively easy to migrate your application data and media to Unraid.

 

Try to use the layout that has become "standard" for Unraid if you can, it will make any troubleshooting a little easier.

 

The cool thing about containers is that you can map internal container paths to match your current settings so they should migrate pretty easily, it's just figuring out where to map those onto the server in a way that makes sense.

 

Based on your first post it may be difficult to do this, but I really recommend figuring out a way to run both systems for a period of time to make the migration easier. Unraid is pretty forgiving to move across systems, maybe put an older rig into temporary use as the Unraid machine while you learn?

Good point about setting it up "standard" for unraid and then copying over appdata and config files. As you note, I can adjust all the container paths so it should be fairly straightforward.

 

You are absolutely right that the right way to do this would be to stand up the unraid server in parallel and then copy everything over. Unfortunately I don't have that option--the original system is dead and given its age, I don't think its worth spending any more money or time troubleshooting it, nor do I have any other machines I could get this up and running on without more time and effort than its worth. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have had a better plan to migrate and done this proactively 🤦‍♂️

 

I really appreciate the help! Think I am going to give unraid a try once the replacement hardware gets here, hopefully this will make getting up and running faster and make future maintenance of the box (particularly dead drives or other failed hardware) much easier.

If I were in your shoes I'd set up the new hardware in Unraid with 2 pools, one being the "media" pool, a large spinning rust drive, XFS, either as a single member pool or disk1 in the traditional Unraid array, and the 2nd pool being 1 or 2TB of SSD, ZFS, for system files like docker container image layers and application data.

 

Leave all your current disks untouched until you have a good long play with Unraid on those scratch pools, then blow everything away and set up in earnest after you have the knowledge needed to migrate without regret.

 

Unraid is enough different than a typical linux install that it can be a learning curve, main thing is the OS portion runs completely in RAM, with the boot USB used for the OS archives and OS configuration stuff.

 

It should definitely do everything you want, but it's going to be just a little different, and I'd hate for you to get half way through the migration and realize you should have set things up just a bit differently.

 

Unraid has been steadily evolving, so older tutorials may not cover things exactly as they should be currently, but check out Spaceinvader One's youtube videos, he's got loads of good stuff about the Unraid ecosystem.

Super helpful--I really appreciate the guidance! I watched a couple of the Spaceinvader One tutorials, and think I am going to do as you suggest--a large media pool plus an SSD as a scratch/unpack/docker/app data pool.

 

It occurs to me that I do have an old box here that I could do some tinkering on without my actual data drives, which seems like a good idea. Ill give that a try so that I can get familiar with unraid before migrating everything over.

 

Really appreciate the help, it has been great to help me understand what I need to be looking for here!