Setup on one machine and migrate to different hardware?

[JohnnyD]

Are there any issues with me setting up a boot raid1 (SSD) and 2x raid1 14Tb pool drives, installing windows and debian VM's on the pool, then taking that setup to another machine and it working OK? The setup machine is a Dell server, and the destination machine would be a SuperMicro MB server? What would be the correct way to do this? I need to minimise the Supermicro downtime as it is currently an operational mailserver.

 

[danb35]

With CORE, the only real concern would be network configuration, as different NIC hardware means different drivers and therefore different device names. I'd expect the same would be true on SCALE, but I can't speak from experience.

 

[soleous]

If you want a clear migration between hardware, why not backup configuration, build OS on new hardware and restore configuration?

 

[morganL]

@JohnnyD Moving pools is doable
Moving whole TruenAS configs to a different server is not a process that we test or the Community tests.
My guess is the networking issues @danb35 mentioned may trip you up.
If you don't have an opportunity to test.. I'd suggest you assume you have to export and reimport the pool.....

 

[JohnnyD]

So if i built the pool and made my virtual machines on the pool on the setup/dell machine, I could backup the pool config AND backup the OS config? Or is it just the pool config I backup, then build new boot drives on the destination/supermicro machine and then import the pool config? Will that resore all my VM's? Is there a guide anywhere on how to do this, or is it relatively straight forward?

 

[jlw52761]

So the VMs are a different beast. Scale will have the same issues with NIC naming, so that would have to be redone on the move.

As for the VM's, the VM disks would have to be moved somehow, not just the configuration, so there's multiple pieces to your ask. For the configuration, you need to download the config from the old hardware, then after installing on the new hardware, import that config. I believe that the VM definition is included, so you will see the VMs listed, but the zvols that are the disks for those VMs will not be there yet.

Then you would take a snapshot of the dataset your VMs are on and replicate that to the new hardware, but you will want to shut the VMs down so that the snapshot is clean and there's no delta data out there. Then it's a matter of possibly registering the VMs on the new location, or if they are present when you restore the config from the old hardware to the new, adjusting NIC mapping and ensuring the disks are still pointing to the correct zvols.

At the very worst, give that a try, you still have the old hardware if things go sideways, and you can rebuild the new and start again. As long as you don't destroy any of the data or anything on the old until everything is up and running on the new the way you want it, don't be afraid to experiment and try, observe what happens, then try again.

 

[JohnnyD]

Hmmm that all sounds a bit messy, I may just write off the extra time and tbuild the new supermicro machine and VM's from scratch......

Thanks for all the info though

 

[jlw52761]

It's actually not that bad to move the VMs. Power off and snap the source VM, replicate the snap to the new hardware, then attach the disk to a new VM in the new NAS. Easy peasy.