step by step tutorial for migration to new server?

[tabster]

Hi,

I´ve already found articles like Moving ZCS to another server.

My situation: I have a server (in a datacentre where I have no physical access) running my ZCS (Opensource edition) on Debian. The version is

Release 6.0.3_GA_1915.DEBIAN4.0 DEBIAN4.0 FOSS edition.

The hostname is mailhost.mydomain.com. Now I have a new server (in another datacentre, other IP address, also running Debian, but newer version) and I want to migrate ZCS to that server. The new hostname should be mail.mydomain.com. At the moment there is only this one MX record for my domain:

MX  	mailhost.mydomain.com. 100

The question is now: At what point in the tutorial should I change the MX record. Will I have to run both zimbra servers some days parallel for to not loose mails?

And what about the hostname? Should I install ZCS on the new server with the old hostname mailhost.mydomain.com and migrate the data and then change hostname to mail.mydomain.com or will this be a problem?

Thanks for your help!

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by tabster

Hi,

I´ve already found articles like Moving ZCS to another server.

My situation: I have a server (in a datacentre where I have no physical access) running my ZCS (Opensource edition) on Debian. The version is

Release 6.0.3_GA_1915.DEBIAN4.0 DEBIAN4.0 FOSS edition.

The hostname is mailhost.mydomain.com. Now I have a new server (in another datacentre, other IP address, also running Debian, but newer version) and I want to migrate ZCS to that server. The new hostname should be mail.mydomain.com. At the moment there is only this one MX record for my domain:

MX  	mailhost.mydomain.com. 100

The question is now: At what point in the tutorial should I change the MX record. Will I have to run both zimbra servers some days parallel for to not loose mails?

And what about the hostname? Should I install ZCS on the new server with the old hostname mailhost.mydomain.com and migrate the data and then change hostname to mail.mydomain.com or will this be a problem?

Thanks for your help!

You should use the same hostname for the new server as mentioned in the blog article, you should also block inbound mail by closing port 25 on your firewall. When you've done that and moved Zimbra to the new server you can make sure that everything is working OK and when you're happy that it is you need to rename the server to your preferred name.

I am, of course, making an assumption that one or both of these servers is behind a firewall, are they? Are either of them behind a NAT router on a private LAN IP?

[tabster]

Thanks for your answer. I have to admit that both of them are note behind a firewall. Is this very important for such a server? They hang directly on the net and I have only this one new server (the old one will be kicked off when the new one is running fine.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by tabster

Thanks for your answer. I have to admit that both of them are note behind a firewall. Is this very important for such a server?

It would always be my preference to run any server behind a firewall, note that it's not recommended to run the firewall on the Zimbra server but it should be behind one.

Originally Posted by tabster

They hang directly on the net and I have only this one new server (the old one will be kicked off when the new one is running fine.

You might find it easier to migrate the users to the new server, how many user accounts are there on this server (and how much data)?

[tabster]

Originally Posted by phoenix

It would always be my preference to run any server behind a firewall, note that it's not recommended to run the firewall on the Zimbra server but it should be behind one.

I know that this maybe would be better. But if I only have one machine, it can be difficult. I could install something like vmware to run the firewall on the host machine and zimbra in a guest system. But is this worth it?

Originally Posted by phoenix

You might find it easier to migrate the users to the new server, how many user accounts are there on this server (and how much data)?

It´s not so much: There are less than ten user accounts with about 7 GB of data in total. What would be the difference?

[ljramos]

You can run iptables

[tabster]

Originally Posted by phoenix

You might find it easier to migrate the users to the new server, how many user accounts are there on this server (and how much data)?

The full migration is more difficult than expected, because I want to go from a 32bit system to a 64bit one. Will there be problems migrating users from 32bit to 64bit or is this a nice alternative to the many steps mentioned here?

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by tabster

Will there be problems migrating users from 32bit to 64bit or is this a nice alternative to the many steps mentioned here?

You need to follow those instructions for a successful migration fro 32bit to 64bit.

[tabster]

Okay, I tried this tutorial and everything seemed to work correctly. But when I wanted to start the new server after migration I got the following error:

Starting ldap...Done.
Failed.
Failed to start slapd. Attempting debug start to determine error.
bdb_db_close: database "": txn_checkpoint failed: Invalid argument (22).
backend_startup_one (type=hdb, suffix=""): bi_db_open failed! (-30974)
bdb_db_close: database "": alock_close failed

Any idea what the problem is?

[phoenix]

It's possible you've either made an error during the migration or the database might have been corrt before the migration: site:zimbra.com "txn_checkpoint failed: Invalid argument" - Yahoo! Search Results