migrate Scaleo WHS to Amahi any ideas?

[geofflee]

Hi all, I heard of Amahi a couple of years ago, but not being a big fan of linux, decided to stick with WHS, back then I bought a Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo WHS box, until now I've been happily streaming media and backing up PCs to this machine - configuration is Celeron 1.6 ghz, 512mb ram, gigabit ethernet, 1 x 650gb hdd [system] 3 x 1.5tb hdd total storage is about 4.5TB, free space is about 1.5tb
My plan now is to migrate this to Amahi, but I'm looking for a nice simple guide to do this.
One thing I'm a bit worried about is the machine is completely headless, and it appears I need to get Fedora linux installed before Amahi, how difficult/easy is this to do?
I'm sure someone out there has successfully migrated such a machine to Amahi, can you pass on any tips?
what would be the best way of preserving the data on my WHS? remove one drive at a time build to a usb drive, copy from WHS to usb repeat till WHS has only system software, I don't really want to invest in another set of drives but cannot afford to lose any of the data currently on WHS
Looking forward to any comments/sugestions
Thanks in advance

[jackpal]

It can be done but it will take some effort in migrating the data. The actual setup of Amahi is dead simple if you follow the instructions in the wiki. If you are new to Linux then I would find an old pc and try to load Amahi on it first for practice. This is just to get you familiar. Once you get it on the network you should be aware that it will serve DHCP addresses and put up DNS. I do not think WHS does this so it may not be a problem but you should be aware of it. Once it is up and running explore it for a bit. You should be able to just "see" the shares provided by Amahi by default. Move some data there and see how it goes. By then you should have a good idea of what you need to do.

I recently migrated from a plain Linux Fedora box serving just a few shares which worked well. I guess I never realized how nice it is to have your own DNS and DHCP. All the info is readily available and very easy to use. I consider myself a very experienced Linux user and Amahi really surprised me. Its going to take some work on your part to migrate but it can be done easily IMHO.

[geofflee]

Thanks for your quick response Jackpal

I'd already figured it would take some work, and for sure I'd follow your tip of installing on an old pc first, I've got a laptop with a pile of old hard drives to practice on lol

but I think my big worry is the 'totally remote headless' install I'll have to do on the Scaleo, WHS makes this easy with the original fujutsu siemens disks, because the Scaleo has no cd/dvd drive, no facility for usb boot, no monitor mouse keyboard conections, with the Scaleo disks you run the install from another computer on the network, is this possible with Amahi?

Has anyone done an Amahi install on a simillar dedicated windows home server?
Are there any workarounds?

Basically my reasons for migrating to Amahi are that the size of the disks in my WHS go beyond what was envisaged with the original concept of WHS [ie low powered, low spec but reliable hardware] but with 2000+ movies and 13,000 music cds backups for about 20 pc's and god knows how much other stuff on there it runs like a snail and media streaming to Xbox 360 ps3 and 5 other connected pcs along with print serving 2 printers and a scanner is beginning to make the 'valves glow white hot' lol ....... will Amahi help in this situation or should I go back to a pile of usb drives?

Any offers of hardware upgrades for the Scaleo [same as intel SS4200E]

look forward to your responses

[moncapitaine]

I'm running Amahi on a Intel SS-4200 device, which I upgraded to 2GB RAM and a Core2Duo E4500. This was not out of necessity for Amahi, though.
I installed wit a graphics adapter in the PCIe 1x slot and a DVD drive plugged on one of the SATA cables.
Tried to do it headless, but it did not work well, as the headless installer was not ready yet.
I need a GUI for jDownloader, anyway.
I have 2 1TB WD10EADS drives, 1 2 TB WD20EADS drive and an older SEagate 250GB for the system in it.
DNS and DHCP running from Amahi, with DNLA server and AmahiTunes installed. Backup via CrashPlan.
Did not use Greyhole from the start because I did not read up on it. Do not know how to set it up on alreay full disks now, but have not really read up on it yet.

Do not hesitate to ask if you have questions.