Upgrade 2-3

I see multiple recommendations to install new vs. attempting an upgrade (shame)

Doing a fresh install, is there any way to restore the "configuration" of the previous version? I've spent a lot of time and effort getting my existing OMV 2 (stoneburner) working just so (networking config, iSCSI targets, shares, and who-all knows what else). The thought of having to manually revisit all that is daunting.

As it has been said many, many times on this forum, there is no way to restore any OMV configuration onto a fresh install other than by configuring it all by hand from scratch.

It is for this reason you should take copious notes about, and screenshots of, your prior install to use as guides when setting up a fresh install. Having a copy of the prior install's config.xml to use as reference would also be helpful. Do you have these things available?

Having said that you have nothing to lose but perhaps some time in trying to upgrade your OMV 2.x to 3.x. That's how I arrived at OMV 3.x and it took several tries to get the upgrade to properly complete.

Of course, I had a full dd image of my 2.x available to copy onto another SSD, and that's where the in place upgrade took place. My original, working, and fully configured OMV 2.x SSD was never at risk. In fact I still have it, along with the OMV 3.x SSD I used the same way to upgrade to OMV 4.x. And I still have the verified to work dd images for all of them.

As reportedly unlikely as it is for an upgrade from OMV 2.x to 3.x to successfully be accomplished, it is not impossible.

In my case, if an in place upgrade never worked, I would have stuck with OMV 2.x rather than do a fresh install. There is just too much more than just OMV there that would also have to be reset up all from scratch again. There was nothing in OMV 3 that I could not live without, so having an in place upgrade path turn out to be a dead end was not a problem for me.

The in place upgrade from OMV 3.x to 4.x was uneventful. It just worked on the first try. But I had a way back anyway.

Again, if you have the proper resources available to perform an in place upgrade attempt with a full and verified way back if it fails, you have nothing to lose but some time in trying an in place upgrade from 2.x to 3.x.

Good luck.

Excellent information. Thank you for your time in replying so fully.

You're right - it's a VM, so I was just going to try. That prompted to post another question about the plugins in 2x that don't appear to exist in 3x.

It's good to hear your honest feedback that there was no compelling reason (for you) to upgrade to v3 in hindsight. That's good to know.

I do suppose I can just install new, v3 and run in parallel and just see what functionality I may miss in v2 that's not in v3. For that matter, should I just skip 3 and go to v4 since i'm starting new anyway? What's you're recommendation?

Your decision regarding skipping OMV 3.x and going straight to 4.x will depend on some factors.

The first thing is available plugins. The list of what is available in 3.x got a lot shorter in 4.x. So if any must haves are missing in OMV 4.x you will have to use dockers or install packages manually. I did a mix of those, finding some of the available dockers lacking.

Second will be support. OMV 3.x is based on debian jessie which is going EOL pretty soon - officially around June 2018 . There may be longer term support via the Debian LTS project, but at best that will be only thru April 2020. I am fairly certain that the OMV team will cease enhancement and feature additions to OMV 3.x very soon if they haven't done so already, and just continue passing along the security patches they get upstream via debian. But even those have to end eventually.

My OMV server has some inward exposure to the internet as I offer some services and things to others, so keeping it updated is something I stay on top of. If it had no inward internet exposure, sticking with a no longer supported underlying OS would not be as much of a concern to me.

I upgraded from OMV 2.x to 3.x after about two years on 2.x. I upgraded to 4.x just a few months later since it was a very straight forward simple in place upgrade and there were no must haves missing that I couldn't replace via a docker or two.

Thanks again!