[CentOS] Best way to duplicate a live Centos 5 server?

Smithies, Russell

Russell.Smithies at agresearch.co.nz
Wed Jun 13 21:25:36 UTC 2012


How about using one of the backup tools to image the server?
We use Symantec System Recovery and image all the disks. We then have the option of restoring to different hardware (physical or virtual) which works very well.
There's a 60-day evaluation period.
http://www.symantec.com/products/trialware.jsp?pcid=pcat_business_cont&pvid=1602_1

--Russell

-----Original Message-----
From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf Of Emmanuel Noobadmin
Sent: Thursday, 14 June 2012 2:36 a.m.
To: CentOS mailing list
Subject: Re: [CentOS] Best way to duplicate a live Centos 5 server?

I'm using KVM so didn't have the tool.

While Les' suggestion looked like it was going to be pretty useful for a variety of backup/restore situations, I didn't know if I had the time to go through the docs and get things working in time.

So in the end I went with the repeated rSync method Scott mentioned.
The advantage is, I also went and made the new system C6 first, then rsync the necessary data files instead of leaving it still on C5.

Thankfully nothing broke, well, except SSL certs for some reason but that was easily fixed once people started complaining.



On 6/13/12, Tris Hoar <trishoar at bgfl.org> wrote:
>
> On 08/06/2012 17:33, Emmanuel Noobadmin wrote:
>> I've got a CentOS 5 server that I want to migrate over into a 
>> virtualized instance.
>> The problem is I need to minimize downtime so was trying to figure 
>> out a way to "live" clone the original.
>>
>> Initially, I thought I could do this via exporting an iSCSI target 
>> from the virtual host, create a MD raid 1 array on the C5 server, 
>> wait for it to sync, then shutdown the physical server and switch to 
>> the virtual one.
>>
>> But after getting iSCSI working... I realize I could not create a md 
>> device on a mounted disk. Unfortunately this old C5 wasn't setup with 
>> md raid 1 originally so I can't just add a the iSCSI target as an 
>> additional member for a triplicate.
>>
>> So I remembered DRBD was supposed to be used for replication.
>>
>> But after getting things set up, running the drbd-admin create-md 
>> command gave me this scary warning it will destroy data on the disk.
>> Apparently because drbd writes meta data to the drive. So that 
>> appears to be a no go too.
>>
>> 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 don't say what virtualisation platform you are using is, but if 
> it's VMware, then you can use VMware converter to do the migration. 
> This can, if you want, clone the physical computer into VMware, shut 
> down the physical computer and bring up the new virtual instance. All 
> whilst the physical remained up. I've used it for a few Linux boxes, 
> where I've wanted a quick dev version of an existing server and its been fine.
>
> I guess, you could try pulling it into an ESXi host, and then 
> exporting that in a format whatever virtualisation program it is you use supports...
>
> Regards,
>
> Tris
>
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