merge meta services from 3 to 1 host

[Antoine Migeon]

Hello,

I have a BeeGFS cluster version 7.0 with 10 hosts :
- 7 hosts are storage only (CentOS 7)
- 3 hosts are storage and meta (CentOS 6)

I bought 1 new meta server and 16 storage servers.

I want to remove the 3 meta+storage hosts from the cluster, and then upgrade to v7.2.5.

If possible I would like to avoid creating a new cluster so that I don't have to move all the data, in order to reduce the downtime.

I want to move meta service from 3 old hosts to 1 new host, is it possible to merge 3 metadata volumes (1 partition on each 3 meta hosts) in 1 new partition ?
I thought it was possible using "tar" (with ACL options...), but the documentation doesn't describe the process (anymore?).
Or is it possible to configure the meta service to use 3 partitions (restored with tar from old meta targets, respectively)?

Regards,
Antoine