Advice on migrating to new hardware?

[surfrock66]

I have an old FreeNAS/TrueNAS server on very very old hardware (though it is fully up to date) with a single pool which is also fully up to date on all feature flags. It is a pretty minimal setup with just 6 data drives; the OS is on 2 USB thumbdrives. I have no jails or anything, it's just storage.

I have a new supermicro server which is all set up and ready to go; the OS is on 2 drives in a rear cage and TrueNAS is totally installed. I have created the same users I had on the old box. It's got its final IP, everything seems good to go.

To bring the drives over from the old system to the new system, what am I missing? I know I should be able to just physically bring over the drives and import the pool, but I'm going to lose my shares and such, correct? I have exported my config from the old system but I've never imported a config before, can I do that with granularity or is it a full wipe? What's the best way to approach something like this other than going setting-by-setting and recreating?

 

[danb35]

I've never imported a config before, can I do that with granularity or is it a full wipe?

It's a full wipe. But that's pretty much what I'd recommend, unless your pool is encrypted.

 

[surfrock66]

Wait you'd recommend the full wipe, or doing it piece by piece?

 

[danb35]

Take your saved config file, upload it to the new system. No reason to go step-by-step through all the configuration again if the existing system was doing what you needed.

 

[Chris Moore]

Wait you'd recommend the full wipe, or doing it piece by piece?

You didn't need to do any of the configuration to the new install on the new server, besides getting it on the network. Just install the OS, get it on the network to access the GUI, load the backup of your config from the old NAS. When you restore a backup config file, the system will reboot to activate that config, while it is down for reboot, turn it off to give you time to move your hard drives from the old system. Note, if you have both NAS units on the network with the same config, they will have the same name and IP address, which will be a problem. While the new system is off, shutdown the old system, move the drives over, and bring the new system up with the old drives. Everything should just come back the way it was on the old system, pool, shares, users, done...
It is the same basic process if you have a boot pool failure and need to put in a new drive with a fresh install of the OS. It is a simple matter of restoring the backup of the config file and all settings are put back the way they were. The exception would be jails, but you said you don't have them.