I recently upgraded my NAS, and in the process desired a few changes that the simple migration methods didnt support.
Here were the requirements
- Migrate to BTRFS from ext4
- Upgrade total storage (from 2TB disks to 4TB)
- Change the name of the NAS.
- Consolidate my increasing segmented media shares
Its also worth noting that I had acquired some new (to me) hardware for this project. Specifically a DS1815+ (with the C2000 cap fix) chock full of 4TB disks. The disks had about 3600 hours on them but were HGST ultrastars with pretty solid reputations.
Because I wanted to migrate the filesystem from ext4 to BTRFS, the the Synology Migration Assistant was not an option.
Because i wanted a new name, backup and restore wasn't really an option. And because i needed to take time (1 week or so) to make the transition. It wasn't terribly feasible either.
Ultimately I used Shared folder sync to migrate the bulk of the fileshare data. This is easy enough.
- Turn on rsync on the destination by going to Control Panel>File Services>rsync
- At the source go to Control Panel>Shared folder sync>Task List>Create
Things to note with Shared Folder Sync:
- While the syncing is running, you cannot edit/write to the destination. Any changes made there will be wiped.
- Use the original shares for new changes until the time you cut over
- You can STILL move any services that read from the shares (ie: Plex) during the transition.
- You CAN fix any share permissions and test them at the destination
For the last point. I have a mix of shares setup on fairly legacy versions of DSM (ie: 4.3, 5.0, 5.1 etc). I did have to go through and edit some share permissions.
Specifically some of the older shares had an extra settings options in
Control Panel>Shared Folder>Edit
In the Advanced section these shares had some extra options that merely needed them to be unchecked in the "Advanced Share Permissions"
These options no longer appear on new shares that are created, but are akin to the Windows "Share Permissions" section on a Microsoft file server. Best I can surmise, there used to be a TON of forums questions on why smb shares wouldnt work and 9/10 the share permissions werent set. Samba has had plenty of changes over the years and now it appears Synology structures new shares to just work off the NTFS acls on a folder.
Once sync's were complete it was a matter of simply updating places that I had shares mapped. Group Policy, user accounts for home drives etc.
I also went ahead and rebuilt the Synology Cloud Sync tasks to backblaze B2. And allowed for them to re-upload. This did take some time thanks to Comcasts data caps.