forklift Synology drives into XPEnology and back?

[digity]

I need to transfer tens of TBs of data onto my Synology DS415+ but since it only has a gigabit NIC it's estimated to take over a week to transfer. The server (FreeNAS) with the source data has 10 Gb networking and I can piece together a XPEnology build with 10 Gb networking too. The drives going into the DS415+ are new (this will be a fresh DSM installation) - can I set up the drives as desired in the DS415+ (SHR RAID and btrfs), forklift the drives into the XPEnology box to transfer the data over with the much faster 10 Gb networking and then forklift the drive back into the DS415+? Will this work? If not, any other ideas?

[sbv3000]

In theory your process should work.

However if I were you I would put the drives directly into your XPE box and move the data, then swap them to the 415. Its less steps and less risky.

I would also check the DSM version on the 415 and update it to match the XPE boot loader version, again less risk if your DSM versions are the same. 

I'm guessing you have tested your xpe hardware carefully to make sure the NICs, disk controllers are working? 

Worth noting as well that the controllers and other hardware in the xpe box may limit the transfer bandwidth regardless of NIC speed, so you might want to do a test first.  

[digity]

1 hour ago, sbv3000 said:

In theory your process should work.

However if I were you I would put the drives directly into your XPE box and move the data, then swap them to the 415. Its less steps and less risky.

I would also check the DSM version on the 415 and update it to match the XPE boot loader version, again less risk if your DSM versions are the same. 

I'm guessing you have tested your xpe hardware carefully to make sure the NICs, disk controllers are working? 

Worth noting as well that the controllers and other hardware in the xpe box may limit the transfer bandwidth regardless of NIC speed, so you might want to do a test first.  

So put the drives in the XPE box first and create the RAID? Doesn't DSM install OS stuff, hardware drivers and initial app/package stuff specific to the box upon first installation? Wouldn't that installation fail to boot when forklifted into the DS415+?

[sbv3000]

Yes, setup XPE/DSM on your bare metal, create raid, transfer data then migrate the drives to the 415.

Check the FAQs for how XPE works, basically it emulates the internal boot loader of a syno box, DSM is installed on all drives as the main o/s. You are right that there may be specific hardware drivers per device, but the DSM migration process takes care of that, when you migrate you will use the .pat file for the 415 and that will 'overwrite' if necessary the 3615/7 hardware drivers. The migrated DSM will also install the correct packages for the hardware. If you keep the XPE build minimal, just let DSM install the 'mandatory' apps (file station etc) that should be fine.

[digity]

So, slight change of plans - I went ahead and copied the data from FreeNAS to Synology over gigabit and that took almost a week (I had already started copying when I originally started this thread). But I just impulse bought new bigger HDDs (Black Friday deal) and now I want to upgrade the Synology box. I imagine upgrading the RAID set one drive at a time would be take very long considering the new HDDs' size (i.e., 4 times the rebuilding/resilvering process), so is it possible to drop both sets of drives (old 4x6TB SHR and new 4x10TB SHR) in the XPEnology box and copy data much faster directly/locally? 

 

P.S. - I put the current Synology 4x6TB HDD set in XPEnology box and it prompted me to migrate the installation, but I stopped as I wanted to try my idea mentioned above, but don't know how to go about setting up the 4x10TB HDD set in XPEnology to copy data over and then popping it in the Synology box without issue.

 

P.P.S. - The XPEnology build has an 8 HDD bay