Machine Change

[asecchin]

Hello all,

I currently have FreeNAS installed onto a thumbdrive, attached to a PC that is sort of limited. It has only 8 gb of ram, with two NAS hdds mirrored.

My question is: if I decide to change the machine I have my FreeNAS, will the installation of the hdds and plugging the thumdrive suffice? Or do I need a complete reinstall of the OS? Does FreeNAS recognize the new processors (this new machine has 2 xeon processors), new ram (it has 94gb of ram), and all the new hardware, maintaining the OS previous configs?

 

[cfcaballero]

I have found FreeNAS very forgiving for hardware changes, but the only way to know is to try. So, back everything up. Save your config file to another device, and I would suggest you make a duplicate of your boot device and experiment with that in the new hardware. If you wind up having to reinstall onto a new boot device on the new hardware, just importing your config should do the trick. Good luck!

 

[Chris Moore]

It isn't a problem at all. I have moved my installation forward to new hardware at least three times over the years. The only problem that is commonly encountered is that you will need to access the local console to set the IP address because it will not automatically apply the old IP address to what FreeNAS detects as a new network card. Once the IP address is set, you may need to reboot to ensure the network stack starts properly and all the services connect. It is easy because FreeNAS detects hardware during boot every time it boots.

 

[Chris Moore]

So, back everything up. Save your config file to another device, and I would suggest you make a duplicate of your boot device and experiment with that in the new hardware. If you wind up having to reinstall onto a new boot device on the new hardware, just importing your config should do the trick. Good luck!

Good idea to have backups as a precaution. Always have backups.