Planning for Simultaneous OS and Zimbra Upgrades

[LMStone]

Currently we run Zimbra 4.5.6 NE on SuSE 32-bit ES9. Zimbra 5.0 will support SuSE ES10, and SuSE ES10 supports Xen much better than SuSE ES9.

Once 5.0 is out, we'd like all of our Zimbra servers to be SuSE 64-bit ES10 Xen DomUs running on SuSE 64-bit ES10 Dom0s. With the Zimbra servers essentially independent of the hardware on which they are running, disaster recovery and server upgrades become a non-issue.

So, right now we are starting to plan the migration and would be grateful for input on this.

Is it correct that we could upgrade a 32-bit ES9 4.5.6 server to 5.0, and then following the D/R guidelines in the wiki, restore the data to a 64-bit ES10 5.0 server configured identically to the 32-bit ES9 server?

If not, what do you recommend as the best way to manage this migration?

Thanks!
Mark

[phoenix]

There should be no issues about upgrading the SLES9 zimbra to Zimbra 5 and the Disaster Recovery should get you to the new SLES10 servers. I assume you'll be doing a test install of Zimbra 5 on the SLES10 machines to confirm that Zimbra has no problems.

[LMStone]

Originally Posted by phoenix

There should be no issues about upgrading the SLES9 zimbra to Zimbra 5 and the Disaster Recovery should get you to the new SLES10 servers. I assume you'll be doing a test install of Zimbra 5 on the SLES10 machines to confirm that Zimbra has no problems.

Yes, we will start building up a SLES10 SP1 Xen host box next week or the week after. We'll then install a SLES10 SP1 domU guest for the Zimbra 5.0 test, as well as a SLES9 SP3 DomU guest for Zimbra 4.5.6.

The SLES9 SP3 DomU guest template we'll use for repeated in place upgrades of Zimbra from 4.5.6 to 5.0, and also for doing the D/R migration to the SLES10 box.

Happy to report back here how it all goes if anyone is interested.

All the best,
Mark

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by LMStone

Happy to report back here how it all goes if anyone is interested.

I'd be interested to hear of your progress. I'm just in the process of moving my own server to xen.