I'll be upgrading my server here in the next couple of days, and I was hoping to get some feedback on my migration strategy. So here goes.

 

1) I'm planning to turn off file duplication on my less critical data to free up some disk space.

 

2) I have to upgrade my motherboard and CPU, and I have a windows box that just died. I'm planning to move my WHS motherboard and the remaining drives to the other case.

 

3) Putting the new MB and CPU in my server case along with the newly emptied drives.

 

4) Installing unRaid and pre clearing all my drives.

 

5) Copying my data from the "temp" WHS to my new unRaid server.

 

6) Add drives and pre clear as they are freed up from my "temp" WHS.

 

I suppose my biggest question is whether or not it's worth the trouble of putting together the "temporary" WHS, or should I try to mount the drives in the unRaid server and save that step?

 

I've already started removing drives from my WHS, and I'm glad I did. It's taking a LONG time. But hopefully I'll be ready to put my new unRaid server together by Wednesday.

Thanks, everyone!

I'd say its good to use the temp WHS as it will stress your network, transfer speeds, and allow you to use a program like teracopy to validate the transfers to make sure nothing gets corrupted along the way.

 

It is of course a little slower this way, but I think the added security of validation is a big plus.

I'll be upgrading my server here in the next couple of days, and I was hoping to get some feedback on my migration strategy. So here goes.

 

1) I'm planning to turn off file duplication on my less critical data to free up some disk space.

 

2) I have to upgrade my motherboard and CPU, and I have a windows box that just died. I'm planning to move my WHS motherboard and the remaining drives to the other case.

 

3) Putting the new MB and CPU in my server case along with the newly emptied drives.

 

4) Installing unRaid and pre clearing all my drives.

 

5) Copying my data from the "temp" WHS to my new unRaid server.

 

6) Add drives and pre clear as they are freed up from my "temp" WHS.

It sounds like a good plan.

 

I suppose my biggest question is whether or not it's worth the trouble of putting together the "temporary" WHS, or should I try to mount the drives in the unRaid server and save that step?

Yes. I would absolutely do this step.

I would also use a program like beyond compare or terracopy to make sure your data is good. I installed the 30day free trial of "Beyond Compare" onto my WHS and used the binary sync feature to make sure the  data was 100%

 

I would also not remove drives from the WHS or tear it apart until you are sure your data is copied over (you might need to buy a few more drives).

I would then run a parity check after you have the data migrated.

Then run the unraid for a few weeks or a month before you recover the rest of the old WHS drives and add them to unRAID.

 

IF that is NOT and option, Then take your time and have patients.

go one step at a time double checking everything..

this sort of thing is when your data is vulnerable.

 

I've already started removing drives from my WHS, and I'm glad I did. It's taking a LONG time. But hopefully I'll be ready to put my new unRaid server together by Wednesday.

it took me about 2 weeks to migrate a 10x 2TB WHS1 to unraid. most of that time was spent consolidating all of the data on the WHS1 to fit on 5 drives. then preclearing the drives.

 

Thanks, everyone!

Well. Here's a bit of wrinkle. I just realized that my existing WHS MB is an ATX board, but the extra case I have will only accept a micro ATX board. So now I'm faced with either trying to prop the ATX board up on the outside of the case (which sounds like a disaster waiting to happen), or to try to find an external USB hard drive enclosure and use my mac to copy my data.

 

I'm glad I'm at least thinking through this ahead of time. I'd have been in a real jam if I'd pulled my server apart and then found out that it wouldn't fit in my other case.

 

Any suggestions?

That can only be answered by knowing your living conditions. If you have kids, pets, are somewhat clumsy, or prone to bad luck, I wouldn't prop it up. You could set it on a piece of cardboard or something non-conductive and run it like that, its actually how a lot of people test and burn in a MB before assembling a computer.

 

Reason I say something about living conditions is doing it like that is essentially fine, but you do not want anything to move the board and possibly short it out. I would never do it because of 2 kids and 3 dogs and I don't have a good place I could keep it to keep it away from the animals(kids included!). Depending on the amount of data it could take quite a while to transfer so you want something stable.

 

If you have a good place to put it, it would work fine having the Mb outside of the case, I'd probably take the psu and harddrives out of the case as well. I wouldn't "prop" it up as that implies it could fall and possibly short out.

 

A external enclosure would work fine as well, albeit a little slower.

Finding a place to put it will be a bit difficult. We've got two dogs, a cat, and a two year old, and I'd be hard pressed to decide which is more destructive  We're in a temporary house while our home is being built, so space is at a premium at the moment.

 

Is the only disadvantage of mounting the drives in unRaid the lack of file verification after the transfer?

As far as I can see yes, that is the only drawback. As I mentioned before using another box is good to test the network and the NIC on the new motherboard, rarely will you stress it as much as when your moving all your data to unraid.

 

You could always find a program to do CRC checks after the transfer and before you clear the WHS data drive. That is what Teracopy uses for file verification and there should be a lightweight linux app to do the same.

 

And I know what you mean, I'm in a temporary setup here as well, honestly didn't even want to run the network cable to the server as I know I'll take it back out. Yes I'm that cheap, even though the cable was only $7-8, I will remove it when I move. No point spending the money twice if I don't have to. Also, if I replace the cd player in a car, I keep the factory to put back if I decide to sell the car.

 

Mounting the NTFS drive in unraid is easy enough, instructions are in the wiki. Then you just cp the data over. Rsync is an option, not used it in unraid so not sure if it was stripped out or not, but it does checksums(which does slow it down) to ensure file integrity.

I wouldn't just walk up and hand a stranger $7 for nothing, so no reason to give them a free network cable either. And I understand about the CD player too. I've put blown factory speakers back into a car I've sold before. I told the buyer the speakers were blown of course, but I didn't see letting them have the speakers for the price they were getting the car.

 

I certainly like the idea of checking my new hardware thoroughly, but I'm afraid I'd spend a couple days just setting up my network. The current house uses the cable providers modem for its router (100 Mbs), so I'd have to setup my gigabit switch as well. I'd probably end up with cables running all over the place by the time it was all done. I was willing to do that when I thought I'd be able to hide my "temp" WHS in a closet somewhere, but I'm not convinced it's a good idea with it sitting on the dining room table with its guts spread out. It's sounding more and more like I'm going to have to live with mounting the drives.

 

Unless someone can come up with an alternative, here's the new plan

 

1) Migrate data off of pooled drives in my WHS. This will put all my files on single drives under the proper folders so that I don't have to find them spread across multiple drives. I also plan to keep copies of critical data on two separate drives, but with the bulk of my non-critical data on single drives.

 

2) Once All of my data is out of my WHS storage pool, I will leave my critical data on a WHS pool drive, and disassemble my WHS. This should leave my critical data and my WHS system drive intact so that I can rebuild that machine if disaster strikes.

 

3) Build my new unRaid machine

 

4) pre clear my empty drives

 

5) mount and copy my data from my old WHS server drives.

 

This will be slow because I will only have one or two extra drives to begin with using this strategy, and, as suggested, I will probably keep my WHS system drive and critical data drive for a month or so until I feel comfortable with my new unRaid box. This puts me down another drive, but the peace of mind is worth the extra time it will take.

 

I appreciate you guys taking the time to think through this!

 

That's what I did :-) 

 

Left my documents in double disks, moved my movie collection to single disks (fingers crossed), making space, remove drive by drive... Worked out great in the end.

You can run all of the current cable runs into the gigabit switch, then go from the switch to the cable modem. If its a true switch no worries, if its a router/switch then turn off DHCP and let the cable modem handle that. Some routers will work with the run going between the gigabit switch and modem being plugged into the internet port, others require it be plugged into a regular "lan" port to act as only a switch.

 

This way you can have your gigabit speeds and still have access to the internet, without running new lines.

 

That is, if I read your scenario correctly. Other than that, seems like a solid plan! I had the same issue with lack of drives so it did take a while longer, but it all worked out in the end.

I should add

 

1a) Keep fingers crossed!

 

It sounds like you've got my network situation pegged. I'm still not sure if I can come up with enough real estate to make a "temp" WHS feasible, though. I haven't ruled it out yet, and I'll keep looking for a good location for everything, but in the mean-time, I'm going to start moving my data around on my server to make it easier to find all of my files (Step 1 above). It looks like it's going to take at least a day or two to get everything situated. The UPS guy just dropped off my new hardware, so now I'm checking my WHS status every 2 or 3 minutes. From everything I've read, it sounds like the first key aspect of using unRaid is patience. So this is my first lesson!

Its definitely hard to sit and wait, I bought a new case when I built mine so while I was moving/organizing all of my data to prepare for the move, I put together my new machine and started messing around with it.

 

As far as the network, even if you mount your ntfs drives in unraid to transfer everything, if your going to have any computers hardwired to the network I'd go ahead and setup the gigabit network. I can transfer on 100Mbps fine, and on the xbox I haven't noticed any stutter so I know I can stream on it good too(of course, since Bluray isn't supported I can't say about that, but I'd say it wouldn't fare to well). But why stick with 100Mbps if I have Gigabit available,  .

 

Good luck and hope it goes smoothly and quickly! I'm kind of sad now, I want to mess with unraid and see what I can add(full slackware for one). Since I don't want to mess anything up, I'm contemplating setting up another server to act as a "test" server. I'll put it to functional use keeping nightly backups from all the other machines in the house, but its main function will be for me to play with and mess up.  With the test server I can play to my hearts content and since weekly backups are currently going to my production server, its no huge loss if my nightly backups go missing.

 

End Note: Unraid is addictive!

I don't think we'll be in this house long enough to really test out any of the streaming. Our new house should be finished in May, and I ran a TON of CAT6 in that house. I shouldn't have to use Wifi for anything other than surfing the net 

 

So far so good. I've got several drives removed from the pool, and I found a few other folders that I had duplicated that have freed up a little more space. Looks like I may have an extra drive to use for my initial unRaid setup. That should help move things along. I also remembered that I'm using a PCI-X card in a PCI slot in my existing setup which results in some abysmal read/write speeds to drives connected to that card. I'm glad I opted for a new expansion card in my upgraded hardware.

 

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