Forced moved of Zimbra server

[russgalleywood]

Hi Guys,

due to the water pouring through the roof at our Zimbra server's current home I have had to move it fast!

It has now been relocated to another branch of the company.

Trouble is, the different branch has a different domain name in use.

I have set up the Zimbra server, changing the authentication method from the old Active Directory server at the waterlogged branch to the new one, staff have successfully connected to it and I'm in the process of pointing the MX records, etc, to it's permanent new home.

So far so good, but now the obvious problem, the Zimbra server has a service host name which incorporates the old domain - something like blueco.co.uk, at the new branch the domain is different, some like blueota.co.uk.

This is a Zimbra NE 6.0.2 server running on CentOS 5.

Although at the moment it all seems OK I realise that this might cause issues.

Unfortunately, looking at the Wiki - ZmSetServerName - Zimbra :: Wiki I see this is slightly complicated thing to do.

So basically, any advice on how to do this easily and as painlessly as possible? And is it absolutely necessary to do it anyway?

Thanks in advance
Russ Smith

[bdial]

it is definately necessary to do because zimbra uses dns rpetty much to identify itself. so if your zimbra server was zimbra.olddomain.co.uk and you completely remove dns records for that olddomain.co.uk then zimbra probably won't even start. why can't you bring the old domain with you?

i hear nothing but horror stories about changing domain/servername. if you have support i'd really recommend you contact them before you go doing it if you're not sure about yourself.

[bdial]

yeah bring the old domain too, making any modifications for the new ip address, and make sure you modify it in /etc/hosts as well on the server and you should be ok.

you can then add any new domains you wish to use fine. zimbra can have multiple domains.

[bdial]

yeah bring the old domain too, making any modifications for the new ip address, and make sure you modify it in /etc/hosts as well on the server and you should be ok.

you can then add any new domains you wish to use fine. zimbra can have multiple domains.

[russgalleywood]

Thanks for your help bdial.

I could bring the domain across too, so would it be enough just to have the old domain as a set of dns references pointing to the server and thats it?

Thanks again.

Russ

[LMStone]

Originally Posted by russgalleywood

Thanks for your help bdial.

I could bring the domain across too, so would it be enough just to have the old domain as a set of dns references pointing to the server and thats it?

Thanks again.

Russ

I'm confused. If you are authenticating against an AD server, from the dry office can you access an AD server which belongs to the domain in the wet office?

If it were me, I wouldn't change anything on the Zimbra server except DNS and /etc/hosts (so name-IP resolution works in the new location).

All that you would then need to do is sort out how to access an AD server with the domain from the wet office.

We have never encountered a situation where a Zimbra domain authenticating against Active Directory permanently lost access to Active Directory for that domain. So I would open a ticket with Zimbra Support if that is the case. In the interim, reading about how to add an alias domain and how to rename the domain via zmprov rd may be good preparation. Regardless, likely you will need to rerun the authentication setup wizard from the Admin Console.

Please keep us all updated!

Hope that helps,
Mark

[russgalleywood]

Hi,

plugging the server in at the dry branch and setting it to authenticate using the details of an account on the dry domain with the wizard was easy and works fine. The User name at both branches were the same so they log on with the same user names but instead using the password on the domain at the dry branch instead.
I have set the DNS to point to the new server location and added references in the \etc\hosts file so hopefully thats it.

Thanks for the help and the suggestions, I'll have a check there.

Russ