Migrate installation from a VM to standalone server

Installation
#1

My current setup is as follows:

Laptop that is running ‘Virtual Synology NAS’ pretending to be a Synology DS3622xs+.
I did that since the laptop had plenty of storage and I wanted to use it as my second backup NAS.
That NAS has a Virtual Machine Manager which can run arbitrary VMs.
Within this VM Manager I am running the VMware ESXi/vSphere (ova) image of HAOS.

I know, this is MANY layers of virtualization, given that HAOS itself runs docker.

Anyways, I am not 100% that my virtual NAS uses all the CPU resources at its fullest and I feel that at times there is some big lag. Honestly not sure if it is due to this setup or not.
But there is only one way to find out…

So my plan is to create some form of backup of HAOS and ALL addons/HACS/settings/etc.
Then I would like to wipe that laptop and install HAOS directly on the SSD.
Last step is to import my backup and hopefully I have a system that behaves the same (but more responsive).

Since I don’t have a second server I need to make sure that my backup is good and contains EVERYTHING. I would have no way of going back to get another backup.

Like I said, in general the setup runs great, however, there are moments where tuning on a light suddenly takes seconds.

Long story short, what is the way to create a FULL backup that I can restore easily?
I mean, I know I will re-install HAOS but beyond that I am hoping for a full restore.

PS: I am running the latest version of everything (keeping things updated).

#2

Have a look at Macrium Reflect Free ed. You can create an image of your VM and restore on another m/c. Whether it will run into hw compatibility errors on boot is another matter though. You might be lucky or you might just wish you’d never read this message.

#3

Maybe you could do a “trial run” first.

  • Make that full backup.
  • Create a new VM with a new HAOS.
  • Import the backup.
  • See if all your stuff is there and works as expected.
#4

Hahaha, I don’t want to install it onto another VM but onto a standalone server.
I realized that Synology VM let me create a full backup of my HA VM. So I have that as the ultimate backup.

I then went ahead and create a full backup in HA and copied that onto a USB drive.
Then I wiped the laptop, and installed HAOS onto it directly.
It fired right up. To my surprise I was asked to skip the onboarding and instead was able to restore a backup without going through a fake setup process…

I selected my 1.4GB backup and uploaded it which went rather quickly. I opted to restore the FULL backup.

Since I started that 30min+ ago I have been staring at a spinning circle and a message that reads Restore in progress. No further visible progress.
I can see that the browser keeps polling http://:8123/api/onboarding/installation_type and that this request times out over and over. I HOPE that is expected.

Some progress update would be nice. I have no idea if I am just not patient enough or if something went wrong.

Anyone knows how long a 1.4GB restore could/should take?

#5

Alright, here the reason why I never saw it finish.
I had changed the port from 8213 to 2053 in my old installation. Somewhere along the way when the restore finished the port that HA was listening to changed to 2053 like it should.
The ‘restore page’ however was loaded with the default port of 8123 which of course never magically changed.
I started to refresh using port 2053 and voila, the login page showed up. EVERYTHING is there from what I can tell…

WOW! This is f****ing amazing! Most commercial products don’t work that well.
I am impressed!