Process of upgrading server hardware (CPU/MOBO/Ram), how to?

[syrys]

Hey Guys,

 

Got a quick question. I was planning on upgrading my unraid box hardware (mainly the CPU). If no mobo change is required, Is it as simple as pulling the old and putting the new and nothing else? Or do i need to do any sort of re-configuration?

 

At the same time, i was thinking about upgrading to a different generation cpu, which would require a mobo change as well (thus maybe even ram upgrade from ddr3->ddr4). If this was the case, how different is the process?

 

Just to add, my current setup has about ~6 HDDs (single parity) and 2 SSDs, some running off a dell h310 raid card, and some through the mobo sata ports. Im running unraid 6.2.x (which ever the current uptodate stable version is, its auto updating).

[RobJ]

Whether you change any hardware or not, unRAID always reconfigures itself for the hardware, on every boot.  So there's nothing for you to do.  It will locate the drives by their serials, no matter how they're connected.

[bungee91]

UnRAID is hardware agnostic, the process should be extremely painless.

The only recommendation (which is somewhat deprecated now) is to remember the slot locations for your discs (a simple screenshot is always helpful just in case), in case you had to reassign them to the array. Really the only one that matters is your parity drive (or both if using dual parity).

However as long as all discs are present on booting the new hardware, you likely won't have to do a thing.

UnRAID stores the disc location by serial #, so even though the ports/locations may have changed, it should find them and assign them to the correct slots.

 

Edit: You beat me to it.

[RobJ]

Edit: You beat me to it.

 

I should have just stayed quiet, such an excellent and more detailed answer! 

[syrys]

Haha awesome. Thanks guys.

 

1 more thing, I'm going to assume things like dockers etc would be seamlessly appear as if nothing ever happened? (I'm assuming the settings are stored in the boot flash disk and it will figure out the docker configuration on the raid/cache automatically).

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

 

[RobJ]

You bring up an interesting point.  All software configuration should be fine, no changes needed, and should run as it always did.  But anything that involved a specific hardware device configuration would very likely need revision.  That would especially be true for VM's.  Any device passthrough or any reference to PCI or other hardware ID's would almost certainly need correction.

 

Most users don't try to associate specific hardware with their containers, so they should be fine.  But it's possible for indirect effects, such as significant networking hardware changes requiring modification, like which bridge is used.

[bungee91]

Edit: You beat me to it.

 

I should have just stayed quiet, such an excellent and more detailed answer! 

 

 

 

You're right, missed the point regarding VM device assignment, but was thinking about specific disc share assignment issues (or disc based mount points) if the disc slots changed (which they shouldn't in this case,  but if reassigning them we think of the data slots as not important to ensure they're correct since the order makes zero difference to parity protection).

 

As for the VM's, fortunately a quick edit to the VM templates to re-select the correct devices should fix you right up (if this is an issue for you). The editor is pretty smart in that if you edit the VM and the hardware is no longer there, it automatically removes the assignment, and doesn't complain about "missing device XXXX", then just assign the device and all should be well.