Best way to migrate from Windows (WHS) to Synology?

[divide_by_zero 7]

Greetings!

 

Finally going to migrate from my deteriorating WHS server to a Synology (918+, I think) when I'm off next week for my daughter's holiday break. I last migrated Emby server a few years ago from 7MC to WHS and to put it mildly, that migration was a pain. Emby backup utility didn't work properly and lost all configuration, play states, etc.

 

I was surprised that searching the forum didn't turn up much, and nothing recent. Anyone know of any guides or general best practices for migrating from Windows to Synology?  Library is large, so I'd reeeeeally love to not rebuild metadata, reconfigure, lose play-states, etc.

 

Thanks in advance for any tips!

[Luke 32936]

Hi there, I would check out this topic, and potentially participate there:

 

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/66481-how-to-migrate-from-linux-to-windows

 

Thanks !

[divide_by_zero 7]

Thanks @@Luke! Will follow those Linux-to-Windows instructions and hope all works well.

Quick question: When I manage my libraries->Advanced, the only relevant settings are explicit options save artwork and subs to media folders (and a setting about saving metadata as NFO, but without any additional context). These are all enabled. Anything else I should set to ensure my metadata is in the best state before doing backup and migration?

Thanks again!

[Luke 32936]

If you're already saving to media folders then you should be in good shape.

[divide_by_zero 7]

@@Luke , I'm working on a quick summary below for others searching in the future. But when I select the backup to restore, it hangs. I do see prompt to select which elements to restore, but there's nothing there other than an endless spinny wheel. (Tried 2 different backups, and left them running for 10 minutes each. Same result.) CPU load is nil.

 

Any suggestions? LMK if I should start a new thread on this.

 

For the benefit of anyone who encounters this thread searching for Windows to Synology migration, here's what I did using info in the thread @@Luke linked to and elsewhere:

• Make sure your current setup is backing up metadata and db to your media folders
• Grab the most recent backup created by the Backup plugin from your current server. (Save it on a local machine for easy upload to your Synology unless you have an easier way to get the files from your old server onto your NAS.)
• Install Emby on Synology using instructions here: https://emby.media/nas-server.html
• Register your Emby Premiere key
• Install Backup plugin, and specify backup location
• There's no obvious place in Emby Server to simply "Restore backup" via browsing to your backup files. To be presented with the option to restore, first you'll need to manually copy your backup folder from step 2 above into the location you've specified the Backup plugin to use on your NAS. After doing so, the option to restore the backups you've copied over will appear.
• [to be continued after fixing hang on loading backup/spinny wheel]

[Luke 32936]

Yes thanks for the info ! Either here or new topic is fine, up to you.

[FrostByte 4724]

Playlists can be backed up and restored.  I think I had to do some editing of the xml files after restoring to change paths, etc.  Faster than recreating though for longer playlists. 

 

After everything was done I was very happy that I migrated to my NAS.

[divide_by_zero 7]

Thanks @@Luke . After rebooting the server and giving it another go this morning, it miraculously stopped hanging when the backup was selected and was able to move forward with restore. Woohoo!

 

@@FrostByte thanks for the info on xml fiddling. Thankfully no playlists here -- favorites and watched status was the big concern -- so no need to futz with recreating playlists in this migration.

 

Now that things seem to be going well I'll finish my migration over the next couple days and update my steps in the post above.

Cheers!

[Luke 32936]

Thanks for the feedback.