Hardware migration and existing RAID
 

Hello There,

I have an old server I build 7 years ago. I have a RAID5 with 5x2TB HD's and I'm planning a major hardware overhaul. My server currently runs on a Pentium4 3.2 Ghz (pre multicore technology) on a SuperMicro mobo. I'm planning to switch to an AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition Thuban 3.3GHz, 3.7GHz Turbo 6.

So here's the question. Can I just plug my drives to the new board and restart the RAID like nothing happened? I don't have space to backup all my data if I have to recreate the RAID from scratch. Intel and AMD should be binary compatible (I mean the RPM's work) so I should be able to invoke mdadm to assemble the RAID after I install Linux on the new server. Right?

Thanks,
Erasmo.

I think you're conflating a couple questions. one is whether the currently installed software will work - the binary-compatibility part. yes, things should just work at that level. but lots of hardware is changing, such as video and disk devices, so you should not expect everything to work. is the raid hardware, or MD-based? the latter should come across, though it may need help assembling, depending on how you built it.

I would probably do a fresh install onto new/different boot media, mainly to decouple issues. that way the only question is bringing over the raid, which should be simple.

Thanks Mark!

I'm planning a new software install after the new hardware is in. Yes the raid is MD based, so I'm planning to run mdadm -A after the install is complete in order to get the RAID up and running on the new install. My current system is Fedora 12 32 bits and I'm planning to install Fedora 15, or 16, 32 bits as well to minimize the risk. However I might want to upgrade to 64 bits Fedora further down the road. Any comments?

Thanks Again,
Erasmo.

choice of distro is a matter of taste and comfort - no distro of similar vintage differs from the others very much, other than taste issues (desktop decor, package manager, etc). nothing wrong with Fedora, though it works best when you upgrade about once a year (upDATES constantly, of course.) if your hardware is 64b-capable, you'll generally see some modest performance increase switching from 32b mode. after all, 64b lets you use the processor more fully (more and wider registers, instruction-set additions.)