So my current motherboard has two Intel NICs that are set up as a bonded with a static IP.  I am using a Norco 4224 case with six SAS/SATA backplanes.  8 onboard SATA ports connected to two backplanes.  Two Supermicro SATA2-MV8 HBAs to remaining 4 backplanes.

 

If I replace the motherboard:

1. If the new motherboard also has two Intel NICs, will the network settings carry over and continue to work?
2. If I replace two Supermicro MV8 SATA HBAs with LSI 9400-8i HBAs, but the drives and backplanes remain the same, will the disks/array configuration carry over?
3. Does unRAID cares if I rearrange the drives around in my drive bay?

 

Just planning what to expect when I upgrade my motherboard and CPU. 

Be prepared that you will need to redo the network settings. It is very unlikely that a new MoBo will contain the same LAN Chips and uses the same PCI bus numbering. So the LAN cards will change and need to be reassigned.

 

The HBA does not matter as long UNRAID can handle the new one.

 

Also, the drive positions does not matter because UNRAID identifies the drives by their ID. You can move them around freely normally...

 

Normally? Yeah there is a small risk that the points above do not work.

If the current HBA does not run in "IT" (JBOD) mode but handles the drives himself, it often happens that the "names" (IDs) of the drives are tampered. The new HBA will surely not know how to emulate this so UNRAID sees "new" drives instead of finding back the old ones. In this case you need to delete the old config and start up totally new.

(and there is also a risk that the new HBA cannot read the old ones formatting scheme... VERY BAD LUCK!)

But as I said, its rare. You can now already take a look at the drive's IDs and if they look "sane" (serial numbers) there should be no problem afterwards.