Migrate big amount of Data from MacOS to unRAID

[AcidReign]

Hey there,

 

I'm new here and am planning on setting up a new unRAID Server. At the moment I run MacOS Server and with the new server coming in next week I want to migrate all my Data (ruffly 10TB).

Now I know the easiest way would be to put the old harddrives in the new server with the unmanaged devices plugin. But I have two reasons why I can't do that.

1. Downtime - I want the old server to stay up and running until the new one is completely done.

2. The Mac runs a software-raid "SoftRAID" - so I guess the harddrives would not be running without that anyway, I assume?

 

So now I need some advice from you pros. What is the best way to migrate the Data?

Put both servers on the same 1Gbit Switch and use smb shares? Directly connect them through their second LAN-Port with no switch attached?

Is smb the way to go or afp?

What tool do I use? I'm not much of a command-line guy. I can work with midnight commander pretty good. Or is there a better tool?

Is there a way to validate that all files came over safe and sound?

Oh and do I setup a parity drive in unRAID before or after migration?

 

Thank you for any advice. 

Acid

[1812]

smb over gigabit networking. you can install the Krusader docker and manage files that way easily on the server. You would would first ant to mount the remote server in unassigned devices.

 

you can do parity before or after, just depends on if you want protection immediately with the transfered data or later. It would a little bit faster if you wait on parity.

[John_M]

1 hour ago, AcidReign said:

Oh and do I setup a parity drive in unRAID before or after migration?

 

I'd strongly suggest that you assign a parity disk before copying your data but also enable "turbo write" and the parity writing process won't slow your transfers down. You can disable it afterwards if you like.

[AcidReign]

Ok, so parity and turbo write it is. 

How about the tool. Midnight Commander? Some sync Tool? Krusader seems to gui to be safe. But maybe that is a wrong prejudice?

 

and how do i See that everything really is there in the end?

 

thank you already so much for your advice. 

 

Acid

 

[John_M]

It depends on which machine you consider to be the server and which the client.

 

In typical use the unRAID machine would be the server and its shares would be exported and mounted on the Mac. You would then use the Finder or some other backup utility on the Mac to copy files across the network to the unRAID server.

 

In this particular case you might instead want to export shares on the Mac and mount them on the unRAID machine and then take control of the file copying from there. If you configure macOS Server to export your shares using SMB you can use the unRAID plugin Unassigned Devices to mount them. Then from the unRAID command prompt you could launch Midnight Commander and use it to copy the files from your Mac shares to your unRAID storage.

[AcidReign]

Oh I didn't think about it that I could go both ways. I that case I will mount the samba shares of the new unraid Server on my Mac. Because I have a neat little tool called chronosync, that transfers the data and then also checks if everything was transfered correctly.