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Migrating into ElfHosted

If you have data and config you'd like to migrate ElfHosted, this guide is for you!

Into a StorageBox

The ideal migration strategy is to transfer files directly into your Storagebox, independently of ElfHosted infrastructure. This bypasses our 1Gbps node limits, and any rate-limits we apply on our migration tools to avoid customer impact. I.e., from a remote location, you can SFTP/SMB/WebDAV your data into your storagebox, before you're even an ElfHosted user!

Drag & Drop (local machine)

The simplest way to transfer into a Storagebox is simply to mount it as a drive on your local computer via SMB, and drag/drop your content across.

You'll want to tell your file client (i.e. Windows Explorer or MacOS Finder) to open \\u*****.your-storagebox.de\backup (customized for your own username), and enter your credentials when prompted.

Note

When using a Storagebox via SMB with a subaccount, the share name you're connecting to must be the same as the username of the subaccount

Rclone (from another location)

If you'd prefer something automated for a more complex / unattended migration, here are some sample rclone configs you can use to transfer data in. In testing, we found best performance with Samba, followed by WebDAV, and finally SFTP:

[hetzner]
type = smb
host = u*****.your-storagebox.de
user = u*****
pass = ************

[hetzner]
type = smb
host = u*****-sub**.your-storagebox.de
user = sub**
pass = ************

[hetzner]
type = webdav
url = https://u*****.your-storagebox.de
vendor = other
user = u*****
pass = ****************

[hetzner]
type = sftp
host = u****.your-storagebox.de
user = u****
pass = *************
shell_type = unix

Here's a brief example re using rclone to transfer data from an existing seedbox into your Storagebox.

  1. Configure rclone for your Storagebox settings, with rclone config. Create a new SMB remote named storagebox, and choose the defaults aside for hostname, username, and password.
  2. Confirm your remote is correct, by running rclone mkdir storagebox:backup/test. Confirm that the test folder appears in your elfhosted-mounted storagebox
  3. Assuming your content is stored under /home/harrypotter/secretfiles, copy it to your storagebox by running rclone copy -v /home/harrypotter/secretfiles storagebox:backup/ (backup is the name of the default storagebox share)

Into ElfStorage

If you're using ElfStorage, rather than a Storagebox, then you'll of necessity have to transfer via our migration tools.

What's the difference?

The fundamental difference is that a storagebox belongs to you (you pay Hetzner for it directly), and if you stop using ElfHosted, you retain access to all of the content in the storagebox without having to do anything.

Pulling data into ElfStorage (preferred)

If your data is elsewhere, and you want to "pull" it into ElfStorage, use our Rclone UIs, configure the remote, and copy into /storage/elfstorage. Transfers are limited to 10Mbps.

Tip

Using RCloneBrowser is preferable, since you can control the transfer parameters (rate, etc, to avoid impacting other users).

Pushing data into ElfStorage

Unlike Hetzner's Storageboxes, you can't transfer data into ElfStorage directly, so if you want to push data into ElfStorage, you'll need to add WebDAV to your apps, and then use rclone to transfer data into ElfStorage as a WebDAV remote. Transfers are limited to 10Mbps.

Config

You may have app databases you'd like to migrated into ElfHosted. Usually, you'd stop an app, copy over its config, and then start it up. Because of our Kubernetes design, you can't actually stop your apps, but you can use ElfBot to trigger a restart-pause for an arbitrary period.

Here's an example workflow re migrating an Ombi database..

  1. Using FileBrowser, navigate to config/ and upload your new Ombi config to a folder named ombi-new
  2. Now in the FileBrowser CLI, run elfbot restart-pause ombi 10 to trigger a paused restart for 10 minutes
  3. ElfBot will restart your Ombi pod, and wait for 10 minutes before continuing starting it up. Within 10 minutes, rename /config/ombi to /config/ombi-old, and rename /config/ombi-new to /config/ombi.
  4. After 10 minutes, Ombi will start normally, referencing your restored files!