Creating a new server ~ which database and migrating

Hi,

I have been using Orthanc as a DICOM server for nearly 5 years. It was installed on a Synology NAS. At that time, Orthanc was available as an app on the synology AppStore but Synology updated their OS to its next version (from DSM 6.0 to 7.0) and removed support for Orthanc (I think it was due to a database that was used by Orthanc not being supported on DSM 7). For now, I didn’t update to DSM 7.0, so I don’t have any problems but I need to consider the fact that there may be an official requirement in the future to upgrade to DSM 7.0 to be able to run new software. Also, I have bought a new Synology NAS that already has DSM 7.0 installed, so either way I need to find a solution to 2 things:

  1. I need to be able to install Orthanc on DSM 7.0 . This seems to be possible using a Docker container.and I have found a pdf on how to install Orthanc İn Docker. However I am slightly confused with the database options. The tutorial I’ve found also installs Postgres as the database for Orthanc. My understanding is that Orthanc already has its own database, so what is the reason to use Postgres as a database?

  2. I’ve bought the second NAS as a spare to protect my DICOM files (around 2 Tb data) offsite, so I need to copy my old database and DICOM files to my new NAS. How can I migrate it? Would using the Postgres database (instead of the natively installed one 5 years ago) on the new installation make this task harder or impossible? Ideally, I should be able to copy the storage folder and the database file but I don’t think it would be that simple.

Thank you very much.

Regarding:

  1. See:

https://book.orthanc-server.com/faq/orthanc-storage.html

That explains many of the various options for a DB, mostly SQLite, PostgreSQL or MySQL. I think most people use PostgreSQL for the Index and a filesystem for the actual instances, including Cloud S3, etc. The DB I think is used to optimize and speed up queries.

There is a section about Cloud Storage here:

https://book.orthanc-server.com/plugins/object-storage.html

This page has some pretty good information about recommended usage:

https://book.orthanc-server.com/faq/scalability.html

  1. For replication and Upgrade, reference:

https://book.orthanc-server.com/users/replication.html

Stephen D. Scotti

1 Like

Thank you very much for the links and information.

I have been able to install Orthanc under Docker and I am able to search and retrieve DICOM studies using a DICOM viewer. While I have created the Postgres database and configured orthanc’s json file to use postgres for indexing, I am not sure if it does use it. My storage folder on the NAS has an index file but it menitons MySQL lite, so I think it somehow bypasses PostgreSQL. Is there a way for me to be sure?

Also, while I’ve installed the plugins version of Orthanc, if I check the web server’s plugin page, there is only one plugin (explorer) and no mention of a PostgreSQL plugin.

Thanks again

You might want to check your orthanc logs and startup with verbose or trace. Even without verbose, there is usually information in the startup log to show which plug-ins are present and installed.

There are some very useful resources here if you are using Docker:

https://bitbucket.org/osimis/orthanc-setup-samples/src/master/docker/

Find one that suits your needs and modify it if necessary. You need to make sure that your Docker package activates the Postgres Plug-in and that it is configured. If you have an empty DB, Orthanc usually creates one at startup time, and then you’ll have to import your study as described elsewhere to get the DB populated.

There is actually a thread on the old server that somewhat addresses your question also:

https://groups.google.com/g/orthanc-users/c/QrjGhJPEUD8

Probably also on this one. You might want to just search for " Convert from SQLite to PostgreSQL"

/sds

1 Like

Hi,

I have set up an Orthanc server in a Docker container on a new Synology NAS running DSM7. It works fine, but for the life of me I cannot find the configuration file.

The container log says that it is reading the configuration file from etc/Orthanc/Orthanc.json, but when I navigate to that folder there is nothing in there…

Any chance you could point me in the right direction please or share the pdf tutorial you mentioned?

Thanks a lot!

Hi,

You must mount/map this file such that the container reads it from your NAS storage - otherwise, it reads it from the container internal storage.

You should also likely map /var/lib/orthanc/db to the NAS storage since this is where Orthanc stores its SQL DB and files by default.

HTH,

Alain

@Drmaestro I’m in exactly the same situation as you were. Would it be possible to give a step by step guide how to achieve the migration. I’m not enough into linux to figure it out myself.
Thank you very much .

Hello,

I have created a tutorial video that shows how to create a new Orthanc container on your Synology NAS and map the configuration file as well as the storage and index folders (on your NAS) to mounted folders in the container, as discussed in this thread above.

The video is: Orthanc-Synology-howto-2024-12-10.mp4

(I’m sorry—I hate videos as much as the next guy, but text tutorials with screenshots, arrows, and all that take forever to write…)

I haven’t mentioned the migration : in order to migrate, you can follow the procedure in the video, then stop the container, then overwrite the index and storage folders with the contents of your previous Orthanc instance : the DB is simply the index file (@alainmazy : can you confirm there are no other files?) and should go into the index folder from my video, and the other two-character folders must be copied to the storage folder.

Then, you may restart the container.

Hope this helps.

2 Likes

Confirmed !

1 Like

Thank you very much!

1 Like