Move TrueNAS-13.0-U3 from ESXi 6.7.0 to XCP-ng 8.2 ?

[JohnnyBeGood]

Hey all,

I'm gearing up to make the switch to XCP-ng 8.2 from ESXi and instead of starting from scratch with TrueNAS I wanted to see if anyone had experience with the same migration.
Is it just of of matter of backing up configuration and restoring it on fresh install of TrueNAS?
I have IBM ServeRAID M1015 Cross flashed to a LSI9211-8i in IT mode.

Thanks in advance

 

[HoneyBadger]

Provided that you have used PCIe passthrough of the HBA on VMware, and intend to do the same on XCP-ng [1], it should indeed be as simple as installing a fresh copy in XCP-ng, performing the passthrough, importing your pool, and restoring the configuration. TrueNAS includes the Xen guest utilities as of 12.0-U1 and even has a section in their guest documentation specifically related to Free/TrueNAS that is distinct from FreeBSD[2]

You may need to redo the network setup if you are switching between an emulated vs. paravirtualized device on either hypervisor (eg: vmxnet3 to E1000)

If you haven't used PCIe passthrough, then you have the question of whether or not your existing ESXi disks are virutal or local-RDM. The latter can likely be presented to a passthrough HBA without issue; the former, obviously not, and you'll need space to convert them.

[1] https://xcp-ng.org/docs/compute.html#pci-passthrough

[2] https://xcp-ng.org/docs/guests.html#freenas-truenas

 

[JohnnyBeGood]

Provided that you have used PCIe passthrough of the HBA on VMware, and intend to do the same on XCP-ng [1], it should indeed be as simple as installing a fresh copy in XCP-ng, performing the passthrough, importing your pool, and restoring the configuration. TrueNAS includes the Xen guest utilities as of 12.0-U1 and even has a section in their guest documentation specifically related to Free/TrueNAS that is distinct from FreeBSD[2]

You may need to redo the network setup if you are switching between an emulated vs. paravirtualized device on either hypervisor (eg: vmxnet3 to E1000)

If you haven't used PCIe passthrough, then you have the question of whether or not your existing ESXi disks are virutal or local-RDM. The latter can likely be presented to a passthrough HBA without issue; the former, obviously not, and you'll need space to convert them.

[1] https://xcp-ng.org/docs/compute.html#pci-passthrough

[2] https://xcp-ng.org/docs/guests.html#freenas-truenas

Thank you so much for the detailed response!

Yes, currently, I have PCIe passthrough of the HBA on VMware. I was afraid I would have to start from scratch.
Once I have it up and running, I will report back in case anyone wants to do the same migration.

 

[jgreco]

intend to do the same on XCP-ng

Be aware that XCP-ng isn't known to have much runtime on it. While I don't have anything specific that precludes the use of Xen, please be aware that there probably isn't going to be a ton of help available to you here in these forums. The list of "supported" hypervisors is ESXi, followed maybe by Proxmox (maybe), and basically very little else has been shown to be stable and reliable. See

"Absolutely must virtualize FreeNAS!" ... a guide to not completely losing your data.

[---- 2018/02/27: This is still as relevant as ever. As PCIe-Passthru has matured, fewer problems are reported. I've updated some specific things known to be problematic ----] [---- 2014/12/24: Note, there is another post discussing how to deploy a small FreeNAS VM instance for basic file...

www.truenas.com

Please be sure to follow the appropriate steps for virtual burn-in of your virtualized system to make sure that it is stable and reliable.

 

[JohnnyBeGood]

Thanks for the advice!
My plan is to disconnect the SSD that has ESXi and use a different one for XCP-ng to test everything for a couple of months before making the switch.
I don't have too much data, but still want to make sure I have a stable hypervisor.