Migrating Hardware...

[frishi]

Hello fine folks of Freenas forums,

I have a question regarding an upgrade I am about to perform on my server.
I purchased a Supermicro 24 bay server, following the sage advice that cyberjock wrote in a post on choosing hardware for Freenas. It was the final piece of the puzzle. I am upgrading from a Norco 4220, which in all fairness has been good so far, except that the lowest two rows of the backplane are shot or not working at all. That said, I am not going to wait for something to happen to my data. I have too many pictures, backups, documents, movies, music that I cannot risk losing anymore.

So I bit the bullet and purchased this (seemingly enterprise-grade server)
It cost $685 with shipping, so yes, I am shaking and quivering. This is it though.

The specifications for the newish server are as follows:
Server Chassis/ Case. SuperChassis ---> 846TQ-R1200B
Back Plane ---> SAS-846TQ (4UDirect Attached Backplane Supports 24x3.5\" SAS/SATA HDD/SSD )
Motherboard ---> Supermicro X8DTN+
CPU Processor ---> Dual Intel Hex Cores E5645 2.4Ghhz CPU
RAM Memory ---> 128GB DDR3 ECC REG Memory (16 x 8GB)
Comes with 24 3.5" Caddies
RAID Controller ---> None
NIC Ports ---> On board Intel® 82576 Dual-Port Gigabit Ethernet Controller
IPMI Management ---> Supports for Intelligent Platform Management Interface v.2.0
IPMI remote management upgrade card SIMPL-3+ Dedicated IPMI 2.0 included
Power Supply ---> Dual 1200Watt power supply Gold
RAILS ---> Come with Inner and Outer Rail Kit
PCI-Expansions slots --->2 (x8) PCI-E 2.0 (1 in x16 slot), 1 (x4) PCI-E (in x 8 slot)

Anyway, my question:

What approach should I take to perform the migration?

Freenas 9.10.1 is installed on a USB stick. I used 2x IBM M105 flashed to LSI firmware, which I hope to re-use in the new server.
Can I just move my HDDs to the new server, move my HBAs and stick in my USB, and call it a day?

I am thinking that since it is new hardware, specifically, a new motherboard, new processors, new network interfaces, there will some finagling to do in software. But is there ~ANY~ risk associated with data, if I go down this upgrade path?

Any advice is appreciated.
Thank you for reading!

 

[SweetAndLow]

Just move your drives and usb stick. You might have to configure networking but I doubt it.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[Stux]

See if the USB boots the server. It should.

Move the drives. See that they pop up in the cards option dialog (if you have them enabled). They should.

If they do, then they should just work when you boot the server.

As @SweetAndLow said, you might need to reconfigure the networking... but maybe you won't.

 

[frishi]

@SweetAndLow and @Stux, Thank you!
I'll give that a try and post an update.

 

[Chris Moore]

@SweetAndLow and @Stux, Thank you!
I'll give that a try and post an update.

I wonder how it went for you?

I moved to new hardware but did a fresh install of the OS on new boot media. When I moved the drives over, all I had to do was import the pool and setup the FreeNAS configuration settings as far as sharing and such. It was quite painless really. If you move the boot media, which should work fine, you would carry over the same config to the new server. It should work, in theory, because FreeNAS re-detects hardware at each boot anyhow.

 

[frishi]

I wonder how it went for you?

I moved to new hardware but did a fresh install of the OS on new boot media. When I moved the drives over, all I had to do was import the pool and setup the FreeNAS configuration settings as far as sharing and such. It was quite painless really. If you move the boot media, which should work fine, you would carry over the same config to the new server. It should work, in theory, because FreeNAS re-detects hardware at each boot anyhow.

Hi there @Chris Moore! Apologies for the delayed reply.

Due to UPS being UPS, I actually had the server delivered today.
(Highly recommend MrRackables eBay vendor)
You are correct in stating that migration is a painless process. I moved my HDDs, the HBAs and did some cable management. When I fired the server up, the only thing I had to reconfigure was the network interfaces, which makes sense because they were named differently than my old server. After that though, everything was as if nothing changed. The chassis is amazing, and even though the motherboard is an older model, I notice no difference. (The particular configuration I got was an insane 128GB RAM, dual Xeons) None of the others I looked at had a SAS2 backplane or were completely out of my budget.

I think this is a wise investment.

 

[Chris Moore]

Hi there @Chris Moore! Apologies for the delayed reply.

Due to UPS being UPS, I actually had the server delivered today.
(Highly recommend MrRackables eBay vendor)
You are correct in stating that migration is a painless process. I moved my HDDs, the HBAs and did some cable management. When I fired the server up, the only thing I had to reconfigure was the network interfaces, which makes sense because they were named differently than my old server. After that though, everything was as if nothing changed. The chassis is amazing, and even though the motherboard is an older model, I notice no difference. (The particular configuration I got was an insane 128GB RAM, dual Xeons) None of the others I looked at had a SAS2 backplane or were completely out of my budget.

I think this is a wise investment.

That is great! I bought hardware as individual components from eBay. It is a great way to save some cash on server hardware.
Would you share a link to the item you bought?

 

[frishi]

Of course, here you go:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/152292632579?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT