On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 12:04 PM, Scott Silva <ssilva at sgvwater.com> wrote: > >> Am I missing something glaringly obvious here, or is the only way I'm >> going be able to migrate is to shutdown the C5 server for a few hours >> while duping the old drives? Would greatly appreciate any pointers how >> best to do this. > You could always rsync the old server to the new one... a few runs will get > 99% of the files, and a quick run after the shutdown can get the rest... Have > a tar file ready of the needed config changes ready and untar it and start up > the new system... An interesting variation on this is to use 'ReaR' to back up and restore the machine, essentially cloning it but give the copy a different IP address as you bring it up. Then when the clone is close to ready to take over, shut down your apps for the time it takes a final rsync to fix up the differences (in the data areas only - avoid /etc/, (etc.), then switch the IP. ReaR is in active development now and is very usable. It is a set of shell scripts designed to run live backups that are capable of restoring to bare metal. It makes a new boot iso with tools from the running system to reconstruct the filesystem (including lvm/raid, etc.) and restore on top of that. Several backup methods are supported but tar to an nfs location is probably the easiest to set up. With a small amount of extra work you can tweak the filesystem layout, etc. if you don't want an exact clone. With hardware differences you might need to tweak modules and build a new initrd, too. ReaR is packaged in EPEL as rear. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com