Migrate from Hetzner Cloud to RamNode

Before starting, create a snapshot of your server in the Hetzner Cloud Console:

1. Log into the Hetzner Cloud Console
2. Select your server
3. Go to Snapshots tab
4. Click Create Snapshot
5. Wait for the snapshot to complete

1. In the Hetzner Cloud Console, select your server
2. Go to the Rescue tab
3. Select linux64 as the rescue system
4. Click Enable rescue & power cycle
5. Note the temporary root password displayed

Connect to your server using the rescue mode credentials:

ssh root@YOUR_SERVER_IP
# Enter the temporary password shown in the console

List available disk devices:

fdisk -l
# or
lsblk

Your main disk is typically /dev/sda on Hetzner Cloud servers. Note the disk size for later.

The rescue system includes most tools, but ensure qemu-utils is available:

apt-get update
apt-get install -y qemu-utils

Create a compressed QCOW2 image of the disk:

# Create the image (this may take a while depending on disk size)
qemu-img convert -f raw -O qcow2 -c /dev/sda /tmp/hetzner-server.qcow2

# Check the resulting image size
ls -lh /tmp/hetzner-server.qcow2

Stream directly to a remote server or S3-compatible storage:

# Option 1: SCP to a remote server
scp /tmp/hetzner-server.qcow2 user@remote-server:/path/to/destination/

# Option 2: Upload to S3-compatible storage (requires aws-cli)
apt-get install -y awscli
aws s3 cp /tmp/hetzner-server.qcow2 s3://your-bucket/hetzner-server.qcow2

Alternatively, serve the image temporarily via HTTP:

# Install and start a simple web server
apt-get install -y nginx
ln -s /tmp/hetzner-server.qcow2 /var/www/html/
systemctl start nginx

# The image is now available at:
# http://YOUR_SERVER_IP/hetzner-server.qcow2

Create a new VPS on RamNode with the same operating system (or compatible version) as your Hetzner server.

On your Hetzner server, copy your SSH key to the RamNode server:

# Generate key if you don't have one
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "migration"

# Copy to RamNode server
ssh-copy-id root@RAMNODE_IP

Execute rsync from your Hetzner server to transfer all files:

rsync -avzP --numeric-ids \
  --exclude='/dev/*' \
  --exclude='/proc/*' \
  --exclude='/sys/*' \
  --exclude='/tmp/*' \
  --exclude='/run/*' \
  --exclude='/mnt/*' \
  --exclude='/media/*' \
  --exclude='/lost+found' \
  --exclude='/boot/efi/*' \
  / root@RAMNODE_IP:/

On the RamNode server, update critical configuration files:

# Update hostname
hostnamectl set-hostname your-new-hostname

# Update /etc/hosts
nano /etc/hosts

# Reset machine-id for cloud-init
rm /etc/machine-id
systemd-machine-id-setup

# Update network configuration (if static IP was used)
# For Ubuntu/Debian with Netplan:
nano /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml

# Apply network changes
netplan apply

1. Log into the Cloud Control Panel at cloud.ramnode.com
2. Navigate to Compute → Images
3. Click Create Image
4. Select URL as the source and enter the URL where your image is hosted
5. Configure image details:
   • Name: Descriptive name (e.g., "hetzner-webserver-ubuntu22")
   • Format: Select QCOW2
   • Minimum disk size: Match or exceed your original Hetzner disk size
   • Minimum RAM: Specify the minimum RAM required
6. Click Create Image and wait for the upload to complete

Access the VNC console to verify your system boots correctly. Check for any boot errors or driver issues.

If your image has cloud-init installed, network configuration should be automatic. Otherwise, you may need to:

• Update /etc/network/interfaces or Netplan configuration
• Configure DHCP on network interfaces
• Update DNS resolver settings in /etc/resolv.conf

If cloud-init was previously configured for Hetzner, reset it to work with RamNode's metadata service:

Ubuntu/Debian:

# Clean existing cloud-init data
cloud-init clean --logs
rm -rf /var/lib/cloud/*

# Reboot to reinitialize
reboot

If that doesn't work, fully reinstall:

apt purge cloud-init
rm -rf /etc/cloud /var/lib/cloud
apt install cloud-init

Update your DNS records to point to the new RamNode IP address. Consider lowering TTL values before migration to minimize downtime during the DNS propagation period.

• Verify virtio drivers are installed (check VNC console for boot errors)
• Ensure the bootloader (GRUB) is properly configured for virtio devices
• Check that the image isn't corrupted (verify checksum if available)
• Verify disk size meets minimum requirements specified during image upload
• Check fstab for UUID references that may have changed

• Verify network interface names (may change from ens3 to eth0 or similar)
• Configure DHCP on the primary network interface
• Check that cloud-init networking is enabled and not blocked
• Remove any hardcoded IP configurations from Hetzner
• Check for Hetzner-specific network scripts in /etc/network/

• Use resize2fs to expand filesystem if disk was enlarged
• Run fsck if filesystem errors are reported during boot
• Update /etc/fstab if it references Hetzner-specific UUIDs or paths
• Check for LVM volumes that may need activation