Minimize Downtime - Hardware Upgrade

[Spritzup]

Good Morning All,

 

So I've taken the plunge and decided to upgrade my aging system to something quite a bit more modern.  I believe this will be my 4th (5th) upgrade since I started running Unraid ~10 years ago, but this is the first time that I really need to minimize downtime.  Mostly because my desktop is a VM that runs on it, and more importantly, the kids will murder me if Plex is offline for to long

 

 

Anyways, the complication arise from the fact that I intend to re-use portions of my existing server while building the new one.  Please see below -->

 

NEW

CPU

Motherboard

RAM

HBA

Case

Parity Drives

 

RE-USE

Hard Drives

Cache SSD's

SAS Expander

Case (I'll be re-purposing the Norco-4224 as a DAS)

PSU

 

 

My hope is that I could build the new system to a state where I can verify stability of the new components, and then get my Desktop VM build on it.  At that point, do the final portion of the upgrade.  I vaguely recall that it's possible to import the disk configuration when changing hardware, just need to dig it out again.  But basically, I suppose what I'm asking, is it possible to get a temp license to have to unRaid boxes running for a brief period?

 

Thanks in advance, and apologies if this is the wrong forum.

 

~Spritz

[Squid]

To just get the system running again, just take a backup of the flash drive (for safety sake), rebuild the system, and boot normally with the existing flash.  Should be no problems except that it will complain that your parity drives are wrong.  Assign them appropriately and start the array.   The VM (especially since you're presumably using passthrough) will take some more work.

[Spritzup]

Thanks for the reply @Squid, but that only partially helps me.  Like I said (or likely didn't say clearly enough), I'd like to run the new system and old system in parallel for a brief period... at least until I can get my desktop VM rebuilt on the new system.  Once that's done, the remaining rebuild is a pretty simple endeavor (famous last words).

 

Is this something that's possible?

 

~Spritz

[Squid]

Create a new trial key for the new system.  After everythings all done, use the existing key (and reassign the drives accordingly), or transfer the licence from the old to the trial.

[Spritzup]

@Squid, awesome!  That's what I was hoping for

 

Thanks for your help.

 

~Spritz