Upgrading to Erasmus from Stoneburner - advice

  • I have decided to upgrade from OMV2 to OMV3, after using 2 for a couple of years. So far as I understand it from reading other posts, it's best to do a clean install. My OMV2 NAS runs as a headless home server, running on an old desktop PC box with more storage added. It has an AMD64 processor, 120GB SSD, 8GB RAM, hard disks pooled using Greyhole, and Plex/PlexPy. I'm happy to send more specific hardware info if needed. I don't currently have the money for hardware upgrades, and as far as possible I want to set up the upgrade to replicate the setup of this one, which I understand and know how to use.


    I have two specific questions which I'm not sure about, and then a list of actions I intend to take, which I'm hoping for feedback on.


    Question 1: Is it possible to migrate the contents of my Greyhole shares out of the GH pool, and back to a single hard disk (subject to all the usual precautions about backing up first)? This seems to me like the simplest/least risky way to make the migration: once I create shares in the new install, I can do them all from a single disk and then set up GH with that disk as the 'master'. If it is possible to do what I am saying, how do I do it?


    Question 2: I'd like to take my Plex databases/PlexPy listening history with me to the new machine, and apparently this can be done. Has anyone else had experience/encountered problems doing this? Or is it better for everything to be set up fresh?


    Those two questions aside, does the following workflow for the upgrade make sense? Is it missing anything important? Am I making anything too complicated?

    • Clone system SSD for disaster recovery
    • Backup storage drives (ditto)
    • Progressively remove drives from the GH storage pool until there is one left (this feels sketchy to me but maybe it is this simple, see q1 above) and then switch off Greyhole
    • Install OMV3 from ISO
    • Add and set up plugins, shares, etc.
    • (possibly) migrate Plex installation
    • Recreate GH storage pool

    I'd love any advice or feedback people can offer.


    Thanks!

  • The problem you will run into is that Greyhole is not supported in OMV 3.0 and beyond.

    --
    Google is your friend and Bob's your uncle!


    OMV AMD64 7.x on headless Chenbro NR12000 1U 1x 8m Quad Core E3-1220 3.1GHz 32GB ECC RAM.

  • OK, thank you for pointing that out, that would complicate things!


    Are there any other solutions would enable me to do the following:


    - pool available storage so that it appears through samba shares as a single filesystem?
    - keep multiple copies of files so there are always two physical copies the event of hardware failure?


    I'd still welcome any feedback others might have on q2 in my original post, or on the workflow for the upgrade and whether I am missing anything obvious. In edited form, this would be:

    • Clone system SSD for disaster recovery
    • Backup storage drives (ditto)
    • Progressively remove drives from the GH storage pool so that all files are on a single drive and then switch off Greyhole
    • Install OMV3 from ISO
    • Add and set up plugins, shares, etc.
    • (possibly) migrate Plex installation
  • Using the UnionFilesystems plugin, mergerfs is the only currently supported pooling solution. I use mergerfs to accomplish what you are looking for, but without using the plugin as I find it not flexible enough.


    I use SnapRAID here to provide some capability of recovering from a drive failure and unintentional file deletions. I don't use any type of traditional hardware or software RAID here.


    I don't see any problems with your workflow other than perhaps to disconnect your data drives before installing OMV from ISO.


    Is there some reason you are not going to install OMV 4.x instead of 3.x?

    --
    Google is your friend and Bob's your uncle!


    OMV AMD64 7.x on headless Chenbro NR12000 1U 1x 8m Quad Core E3-1220 3.1GHz 32GB ECC RAM.

  • Thank you. It sounds as if I would be able to use UnionFilesystems and SnapRAID; can they work together?


    Good idea re: the data drives - do you mean simply yank out the SATA cables so that there's no risk of installing on the wrong ones or similar mistakes?


    I hadn't realised that there was a stable 4.x release. I'm not against it in principle but I'm keen to have the option of running a Docker plugin, and on comparing the two it looks as if that plugin is only available for 3.x. Generally I stay out of the CLI unless I need to, and prefer the plugins - I'm not afraid of the CLI but do need step-by-step guidance and that generally increases the time it takes to do anything, as I have to come in here and ask someone else to hold my hand/give instructions if I run into difficulties.


    Any idea whether the upgrade from 3.x to 4.x is also something that has to be done on a clean-install basis? Because though I like a wider range of plugins, I also hate having to do clean installs, so it might be better to go for 4.x and wait for the plugins to be available.


    Thanks for the advice, and hope you don't mind more questions.

  • Yes, SnapRaid and mergerfs get along just fine.


    Yes, unplugging the data cables will suffice.


    OMV 4.x is very stable for me, I have no serious showstopper problems with it. There are fewer plugins available in some areas of the software though. But you can use dockers or manual installs and manual configurations of available packages to get around this. I have done a mix of both here.


    I have upgraded from OMV 2.x to 3.x, and then 3.x to 4.x. There is no way I am going to be willing to do a fresh install and complete by hand configuration to get onto the latest version of OMV. I have too many other things that I have added into OMV that would take a huge amount of time to reproduce on a fresh from scratch install.


    I run my OMV from an inexpensive 16GB Samsung SATA 2.5" SSD drive. I have a few of these and they can be bought used on ebay for less than $20 each.


    So, before I attempt an upgrade from one version of OMV to the next, I make an exact copy of my current disk, and I do the upgrade on the copy. Also, make sure you (on the copy) uninstall any plugins that do not have a corresponding plugin on the later version version of OMV. Then perform the upgrade on the stripped down copy. If something goes wrong, you can try again on by making another copy of your current install, then attempt the upgrade again on the copy.


    My upgrade from 2.x to 3.x had some problems, and it took a few tries to get it to go all the way. The upgrade from 3.x to 4.x was unremarkable, everything worked. I just had to put a few things back in via dockers, and one or two things had to be manually installed and configured (because I did not like any of the available dockers for those few things).


    As for waiting for plugins to become available, I would not do that. They might not materialize. At least one maintainer of plugins who posts here has explicitly said there are some plugins he has been responsible for that will not be ported to OMV 4, not by him anyway.


    Feel free to ask ask questions, but try searching the forum a bit first.

    --
    Google is your friend and Bob's your uncle!


    OMV AMD64 7.x on headless Chenbro NR12000 1U 1x 8m Quad Core E3-1220 3.1GHz 32GB ECC RAM.

  • Did you also uninstall plugins they are not in the main package? For example plex is also available in omv-extras 4 and i had installed it via omv-extras 3. Would you uninstall it before the upgrade? Or would be enough to upgrade and then upgrade to omv-extras 4 and upgrade plex after it?

    OMV 4 Arrakis | Kernel 4.14 ... running on
    SelfBuilt NAS -- Asrock Q1900-ITX -- 4x 2,4 GHz in Burst Mode -- 4 GB DDR3 RAM -- RAID 5 -- 3x 3TB WD Red

  • I only uninstalled 3.x plugins that had no corresponding 4.x plugin.


    omv-extras and plex both have a 3.x and 4.x plugin, so I did not uninstall those from 3.x when upgrading to 4.x.

    --
    Google is your friend and Bob's your uncle!


    OMV AMD64 7.x on headless Chenbro NR12000 1U 1x 8m Quad Core E3-1220 3.1GHz 32GB ECC RAM.

  • So, before I attempt an upgrade from one version of OMV to the next, I make an exact copy of my current disk, and I do the upgrade on the copy. Also, make sure you (on the copy) uninstall any plugins that do not have a corresponding plugin on the later version version of OMV. Then perform the upgrade on the stripped down copy. If something goes wrong, you can try again on by making another copy of your current install, then attempt the upgrade again on the copy.

    I assume you use 'dd' for this (or clonezilla)? If so, can you provide your command just so I'm not overlooking any extra attributes/properties for it. Thanks.

  • It was straight dd with source, and destination only.

    --
    Google is your friend and Bob's your uncle!


    OMV AMD64 7.x on headless Chenbro NR12000 1U 1x 8m Quad Core E3-1220 3.1GHz 32GB ECC RAM.

  • It was straight dd with source, and destination only.

    OK, cool. There is a great script out there that allows you to calculate the optimal blocksize (bs=). I find it makes a big difference on speed of copy.


    BTW - doesn't OMV have issues with this method since it depends a lot on disk-id? Did you have to change it anywhere?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    There is a great script out there that allows you to calculate the optimal blocksize (bs=)

    I have seen very little difference using anything bigger than bs=1M. So, I use it for everything.

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  • Yes, SnapRaid and mergerfs get along just fine.

    Hi again, I'm very happily getting along with OMV4 and Docker. Am now preparing to move to SnapRAID and mergerfs, and have had a bit of a play around with these on a VM to get the hang of them. One thing I can't work out - and this is something I haven't managed to work out by searching the forums - concerns how to implement these using existing filesystems. There is quite a good SnapRAID plugin guide here, but no corresponding guide that I've found for the UFS plugin, and I can't work out whether it matters which order I implement them in - i.e. whether to set up SnapRAID first, or mergerfs, or something else. Do you have any advice on this?


    Thanks...

  • I makes no difference which you implement first, and implementing both is not required either. You can run one or the other or both.

    --
    Google is your friend and Bob's your uncle!


    OMV AMD64 7.x on headless Chenbro NR12000 1U 1x 8m Quad Core E3-1220 3.1GHz 32GB ECC RAM.

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