I'm planning to move my "live" unraid box to new hardware. Currently running Unraid Pro 5.05.

 

Moving from:

Sempron 140

Biostar TA760G M2+

4GB ram

 

To:

Core 2 Duo E6850

Some Intel/Dell board pulled from a T3400 workstation

4GB ECC memory

 

I have 10 data drives plus parity and a raptor as cache running off motherboard sata ports, Highpoint RocketRaid 2310 and Promise TX4... I can't afford to screw this up!

 

Is it really as simple as swapping out motherboard/processor/memory, adding my add-in cards and voila? Are there any precautions/documentation I should take before the upgrade? Should I plug in all the drives at once or just start with a few, say the ones on the motherboard?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Gah, I *just* noticed this board only has 4sata ports vs the 6 the old board had. Good thing I have two free ports on my controller cards. I'm also giving up onboard video. Ahh well, I still believe it's worth the increase in horsepower.

Pick up a cheap video card to put in it.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%204093&IsNodeId=1

Yeah definitely - I have cheap cards - I guess my point was more I lose a PCI-E slot to graphics which wasn't the case with onboard video and the ones I have all have fans; another source of heat/point of failure. Not a big deal, moreso just making a note of the change.

 

Data integrity through this process is my utmost concern, so still looking for input on order of operations / best practices.

Get a cheap PCI video card, rather than PCI-e.

I will add my 2 cents for what its worth, I was forced to upgrade my motherboard/cpu/memory due to a psu short on the motherboard (a whole lot of melting happened). I had a snapshot of the drive order and names, swapped all the drives to the new server, including a hw raid card for the cache drive.

 

I powered it up, put the drives in the right order, started parity check and everything else came back fine. Not sure if its the correct way but it worked for me. At least if it goes badly the old hardware is still there to revert back to.

Awesome, thanks for the replies and the experience Markb!

 

I'm not sure when I'll get to the move but I'll be sure to post my experience either as-it-happens (if things to south) or after if things are peachy