Moving from a HP Gen7 to a TerraMaster F5-221

[strainu]

Hi folks,

 

My old N54L microserver running DSM-6 is starting to show signs of fatigue so I thought it was time for an upgrade. I am moving my data to a new TerraMaster F5-221 on which I plan to install DSM-7 using the tutorials in the forum. I did some initial tests using an old disk and the installation - from scratch - worked OK. Now, my question is: can I just move the disks from the old server to the new and apply the upgrade process or should I try to upgrade to DSM-7 on the Gen 7 (pretty much impossible as far as I see on the hw requirements)?

 

I do have a backup, so a failure during upgrade would not be a disaster, but I would still prefer to keep the data if possible. Last time when I upgraded from an ESX server to the Microserver I just moved the USB stick and drives and everything went smoothly, but then I used the same loader and just updated the DSM version.

[IG-88]

17 hours ago, strainu said:

I do have a backup, so a failure during upgrade would not be a disaster, but I would still prefer to keep the data if possible. Last time when I upgraded from an ESX server to the Microserver I just moved the USB stick and drives and everything went smoothly, but then I used the same loader and just updated the DSM version.

 

moving disk to a different unit and upgrading dsm is also a supported scenario (like having a ds3615 with dsm 6.2.4 and moving to a ds3622 with the disks

if you already have a ready made working usb for the new system with the right dsm type and network settings (mac) you can just move the disks, boot with the new loader usb (for dsm 7.1) and look what is suggested, as the loader (like the usb dom in a original new syno system) is already 7.1 it will mount the old system, recognize the older dsm version and will suggest a upgrade (along with the change to a different "hardware", there is a list of "official"  paths in syno's  KB but if you already come from a dsm6 xpenology afaik there is no limit of what your destination system can be, you can choose whatever the dsm7 loader offers (that limit is mostly relevant when coming from original units that are ARM based)

migrating like that keeps all things like 2GB size of system partition (if you set up a new system on empty disks the "new" default size is 8GB for the dsm system raid1 on every disk in the system) or the file system of the data partition(s), like ext vs btrfs), btrfs is already needed for some things (VMM as example), not much known about the new 8GB system size (i guess that might get important in 5+ years?)

there might also be some "misses" with packages as dsm7 uses a different way but by now most 3rd party packages are available and you would have to deal with that anyway even when setting up a fresh 7.1 system

 

if you dont have new disks and a backup then moving disks is the easiest way with nearly no offline time and if things are not the way you like it you can still reset dsm to defaults or even  delete everything and start over with empty disks and setup from scratch