Best way to migrate to PSA 8??

[Galactic Zero]

Ok, I'm getting ready to migrate all my 7.5.x sites / mail / stuff to a new install of PSA 8.

What is the best way to accomplish this? A: use the current backup utility within each domain and download, then create the new domain on the server and upload and restore? B: psadump onto the second HD on the server then import back? C: copy all domains to spare HD, export the MySQL DB's, mail dir's to the spare and then after setting up the domains again on the new system copy over and import all the db's and copy all mail files?

I'm talking about 28 domains I control all but two of them, I have source files for them etc.

Thanks.

[scott]

With blatent disregard for any kind of planning!

j/k

Option 1) you can use the psa migration agent to copy your domains from 7.5 to 8, this generally works OK. But there are times when not every domain will transfer, so worst case is you have to do those manually.

Option 2) Set up a vmware host locally, running the same version of PSA, 7.5 in this case. psadump the running box, psarestore it into vmware. Then upgrade the vmware image to 8.0, and then you can test things out to make sure its OK. Assuming it is, psadump your vmware and then psarestore (or whatever its called in that to your new install.

[Galactic Zero]

I like option one that requires me to have a second box yes? I was planning on just having a new imaged drive put in my existing box and then moving everything over.

[scott]

Yeah, so I'd go with plan B, do a dry run in vmware. As a side note, the vmware server is free now, Ive been using it in my test lab, about the only thing it doesnt have that you'd get in the workstation version is the snapshot manager.

[Galactic Zero]

Ok, which VMware? A little lost on that one..

[breun]

Yeah, so I'd go with plan B, do a dry run in vmware. As a side note, the vmware server is free now, Ive been using it in my test lab, about the only thing it doesnt have that you'd get in the workstation version is the snapshot manager.

Do you have a pointer to something like a howto or could you provide us with some steps on doing a dry run using vmware? Sounds interesting, although also a bit time consuming.

So far I have upgraded one server from 7.5.4 to 8.0.0 and that went pretty smooth (with qmail-scanner, clamav, spamassassin from ART). That box served only one domain though, for testing. I have been holding back on upgrading the rest of my servers.

[scott]

I personally use vmware workstation, which is not a free product. However vmware has since open sourced/made free the Vmware server (formerly ESX or GSX server), the main feature the workstation has over server is the ability to make multiple snapshots of an OS, which unless you're doing development work probably wont matter. Basically you're reducing an operating system into an application, vmware by default emulates all the hardware, including hard drives, on the host OS. The "hard drives" are just big files (usually no more than 2G, it will split them for you) which you can transfer/back up normally. So for example, once Ive installed an OS into vmware, I will regularly copy it around, or to my friends. You can also download OS images from vmware.com to save you the time of installing an OS locally.

What you'd do is install CentOS, Fedora, etc like you would on a normal box. Then install PSA, and the backup utils. From there you'd download the backup from the live box, and then restore it to the vmware image.

This is my linux bias talking here, but Ive found the performance of using windows as the host OS to be terribly slow. If you can, use a linux host OS.

[Galactic Zero]

Ok, so I've downloaded Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 3 with VMware workstation 5.0 Eval and have my keys.

I need to download psa8? and do the migration to it from my sever?