Migrate two existing NAS into one new NAS

[rjosse]

Hi,

I'm the happy owner of 5 Qnaps, one TS-410, one TS-412, one TS-651, one TS-653A, one TS-231P and one TS-251+. As the TS-410 is slightly approaching end of support for the firmware, I'm planning to replace it with a new NAS, and merging the data from the TS-412 at the same time. The question is which model to use, and what scenario to apply.

I'm currently considering two options: i) a TS453A (or any Intel 4 bay model) with the UX500P drive expansion unit where I'll place the disks of the TS-410 and the TS-412, or ii) a TS-853A where I'd place all the disks of the TS-410 and the TS-412 in the same order than in the existing original model. My aim here is not to buy new drives, just the enclosures. And I wouldn't mind having two RAIDs in the final setup.

While I understand that moving one of the previous units in the new enclosure should work without a problem, I'd like to have a confirmation and some clues on how to proceed in both scenarios, especially in the second one, the one that have my preference for the moment.

Can someone help me?

Many thanks and kind regards,

Raphaël

[dolbyman]

buy new drives and transfer the data ... you dont want to deal with legacy volumes and miss out on storage pool features

[P3R]

I'm currently considering two options: i) a TS453A (or any Intel 4 bay model) with the UX500P drive expansion unit...

Why on earth are you considering this as an alternative. The UX expansion chassis are underperforming and are overpriced so a TS-853 is not only much better, it's also less costly (at least in my market).

While I understand that moving one of the previous units in the new enclosure should work without a problem, I'd like to have a confirmation and some clues on how to proceed in both scenarios, especially in the second one, the one that have my preference for the moment.

System migration, while normally a very useful feature, is not recommended when going from old cat1 models (TS-410 and TS-412) to new cat2 models (TS-X53A and all other modern NASes). You'd be buying a Porsche but with a permanently installed 70 km/h speed restriction (how fun would that be?).

With all those NASes maybe you could juggle data around in some way to avoid buying new disks, or at least buy only a few? If disks are very much out of warranty, it's probably time to replace them anyway.

Migrating disks from two NASes into one isn't supported so would very risky. That's another reason not to migrate the disks over directly but instead consider better methods.

[rjosse]

For reference, I replaced all the disks on the two NAS in January 2015. And I cannot easily move data around the various NAS.

[P3R]

For reference, I replaced all the disks on the two NAS in January 2015. And I cannot easily move data around the various NAS.

Okay. Your data, your NASes. You do whatever you wish with it. We can only give advice based on what you tell us and that's what we've done.

Despite being posible in many cases, migrating disks from old cat1 models into newer cat2 models is very much limiting your future options. Also trying to do a live system migration of two NASes into one would be very risky as it's not at all supported. You may lose everything or if you're very, very lucky it may work.

Obviously we know nothing about your data storage strategy and some of these NASes may be for backup but I hope that you realize that to have a reliable data storage, you also need backups of the data on separate systems.

[rjosse]

FYI, I finally went to a TS-453A with 6TB Seagate drives.

Will have spare drives for my other Qnap models.