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Moving drives to a new chassis
We have a RN312 in RAID1 configuration which we use for sharing some folders and also for providing iSCSI drives to a couple of Windows machines. We are thinking of buying another RN312 chassis (with no drives) as a replacement, just in case the power supply of the main RN312 gets burned.
The question is:
Is there any way to move the drives from a supposed faulty unit to the replacement chassis and have the new unit to recognize the LUNs for iSCSI? I mean, I have seen that I can backup RN configuration to a USB (and that will copy things as users, shares, IP, etc.) but will that copy LUNs and iSCSI associations as well? and what about RAID configuration?
If not, can you think of any way to do this in order to be able to move the drives from one faulty chassis to another empty one the more transparent way and with minimum re-configuration of the new unit?
Thanks in advance!!!
All your data including your configuration is on the disks so it will remain when moving the disks to another chassis. If the only problem is hardware failure then this should work fine.
However sometimes users mistake an issue on the disks for hardware failure or have both hardware failure and another issue. If there is an issue on the disks it will remain when moving the disks to another chassis.
You should regularly backup your data e.g. using software on the PC the iSCSI initiator is running on.
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All your data including your configuration is on the disks so it will remain when moving the disks to another chassis. If the only problem is hardware failure then this should work fine.
However sometimes users mistake an issue on the disks for hardware failure or have both hardware failure and another issue. If there is an issue on the disks it will remain when moving the disks to another chassis.
You should regularly backup your data e.g. using software on the PC the iSCSI initiator is running on.Thank you mdgm!!
Is the firmware also in the drives? Just having one exact model RN31200 as replacement would be enough, or will it have to be a specific release or firmware version?
Alvarolo wrote:
Is the firmware also in the drives?
The OS runs from a boot partition on the drives. but it is also in the flash. With OS6, when you migrate disks the boot process compares the flash version with the on-disk version. If there is a mismatch, than it takes whatever if newer. That is, if the flash is newer. the flash version is installed to the disks. If the boot partition is newer, the flash is updated from the boot partition.
There is also code in there to support ARM->x86 and X64->ARM migration, which is pretty cool.
So you don't need to precisely match the model or the firmware in it's flash.
Still, I do suggest installing a temporary scratch disk in the new unit first, and update the firmware first if that is necessary. Then power down and do the disk migration. Perhaps that is overly cautious, but I'd rather not risk a failed firmware update when I'm migrating. Plus it does provide some assurance that the replacement chassis is working properly.
I am using 2 mirrored drives (NAS 3Tb each) that is generating the following message.
V+12 power is out of normal range [expected: 12.00 current: 11.08].
Because it is reaching its storage limit
Volume C is approaching capacity:
95% used
143G available.When I started getting the error messages, I purchased a used ReadyNAS Pro 4 chassis.
I decided that now was the time that I should "move" all of the "shares" plus the Photo II apps from the Pro 2 to the Pro 4..
I searched the Forum for "cloning", "transfering" & etc but didn't find anything that I understood or felt was similiar so I did the following.
I thought that I could "save" disk 1 as a "backup", I took disk 2 and installed it in the Pro 4 1 slot and I installed a new disk in slot 2.
The following messages were received.
Data volume will be rebuilt with disk 1.
RAID sync started on volume C.
RAID sync finished on volume C.
When I examined the Pro 4 with Windows Explorer, I found that the NAS had only the 2 default shares; Backup & Media & no Photo II files.
AND THAT WASN'T GOOD!
Now I was worried that I also might have lost my "backup" files.
I installed a new 2nd drive in the Pro 2.
The following messages were received.
Data volume will be rebuilt with disk 2.
RAID sync started on volume C.
RAID sync finished on volume C.
And it appears that I still have all of the files & the Photo II apps still are present.
WHAT DID I DO WRONG WHEN I WAS BUILDING THE PRO 4?
Do I have to take both of the 2 drives in the Pro 2 and move them to the Pro 4 to still have all of the files & Photo II apps in the Pro 4?
I APPRECIATE ANY HELP YOU ARE ABLE TO PROVIDE ME. THANKS FOR READING THIS POSTING!
Can you let me know what firmware is running in both the pro-2 and the pro-4?
The best thing to do now is to create the shares you want on the pro-4, and then use a frontview backup job to copy the files in those shares over from the pro-2. Rsync is a good backup mechanism for this. Create one backup job for each share (letting it finish before starting the next).
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