RAID passthrough to Virtual machine for Migration

[fermie]

I am planning a migration from a windows server build running Hyper-V to Truenas Scale. I currently have a RAID card hosting a 60TB array, formatted as NTFS. I will be upgrading to larger SAS 3 drives and connecting them to a HBA on the same computer.

The plan is to lose Windows install Truenas, create a pool with the new drives, then bring up one of my Windows VMs, passthrough the RAID volume to that VM, and use that to copy my data over to the new Truenas volume. Will this work?

Alternately, can I mount the NTFS RAID array in Truenas Scale, and copy it over using the CLI?

Are there other suggestions for moving the data from the RAID array to the new Truenas volume, given that I only have one server?

Thanks,
fermie

 

[HoneyBadger]

Welcome!

Given the constraint of "only one server" this is one way to complete it, the other being doing it "the inverse way" which might be my preference - create a TrueNAS VM in Hyper-V, pass through the HBA, create the pool and copy the data there. Once that's done, install TrueNAS on the bare metal, import your pool (on the HBA) and you're all set.

Doing it this way means you keep your existing Windows system running and have two complete copies of the data prior to the server having TrueNAS installed on it - to me, that would be more comforting than having access to your data be dependent on getting PCIe passthrough working first.

 

[fermie]

Welcome!

Given the constraint of "only one server" this is one way to complete it, the other being doing it "the inverse way" which might be my preference - create a TrueNAS VM in Hyper-V, pass through the HBA, create the pool and copy the data there. Once that's done, install TrueNAS on the bare metal, import your pool (on the HBA) and you're all set.

Doing it this way means you keep your existing Windows system running and have two complete copies of the data prior to the server having TrueNAS installed on it - to me, that would be more comforting than having access to your data be dependent on getting PCIe passthrough working first.

I've already built a Truenas Scale VM for testing and learning Truenas, so I think that's a great solution.

Thanks for your reply!

Fermie