copy/migrate users to new server for upgrade testing

[mrluohua]

Hi there!

We are running 4.0.2 and want to upgrade to 4.5.3, however, we want to do a test run on different but similarly spec'd hardware to see how long it takes, and make sure the process is smooth, etc.

Our zimbra production servers are fairly heavy-use; we have 3 servers:

ldap.domain.com (ldap only)
mail1.domain.com (mailstore)
smtp1.domain.com (smtp only)


I have installed a new zimbra 4.0.2 server with all components (ldap, smtp, mailstore) all for testing as "testdomain.com".

What is the best way to copy/duplicate all the users from my production "mail1.domain.com" to the test "testdomain.com" server?

1) I thought if copying the entire /opt/ directory over, but, the production mail1.domain.com doesn't have ldap or smtp running on it ... I'd like to use just one server to test

2) Perhaps write a script to backup all the users off of the production mail1.domain.com mailstore using "zmbackup --account", then scp'ing the data over to test.domain.com and doing a create user + restore? Will it matter than the users belong to "domain.com" and I'm restoring to "testdomain.com" ? I'm also afraid that this would take days to run.

3) ..or along the lines of #2, do a "restore" from the normal backups on "mail1.domain.com" to the new "testdomain.com" ..? What is the process for this? Scp over the /opt/zimbra/backup/ directory to the testdomain.com server and restore? Share /opt/zimbra/backup over nfs, and mount on testdomain.com and restore? (this one doesn't seem optimal)

4) any more suggestions?

Thanks for any ideas!