Move Server

From time to time, it may be needed to move to a new server. Either because the old hardware is to old, or something really bad happened to the old server.

In this example, we're moving from oldserver to newserver.

This information is valid for the Secure Filetransfer appliance version 1.2 or later. If you're running an older version, please update to a later version first.

1. Install the new server, either from the latest VMware image or using any of the ISO images available from http://updates.allardsoft.com. newserver needs to install the same or newer version as oldserver.
2. Give newserver the same hostname as oldserver and install the license from oldserver (this assumes that oldserver will be decommissioned when this has completed).
3. After the license has been installed, the hostname can be changed as required.
4. Enable console access on newserver.

Almost all configuration is stored in the MySQL database (less some system configuration like network configuration that has to be set manually).

oldserver:

/usr/local/bin/mysqldump --all-databases --force 2>/dev/null | gzip -9 > /var/tmp/mysql.sql.gz
scp /var/tmp/mysql.sql.gz newserver:/var/tmp

newserver:

gzip -cd /var/tmp/mysql.sql.gz | mysql
rm /var/tmp/mysql.sql.gz
cd /var/sfta/current
rake db:migrate

This last step updates the database schema if newserver is running a later version than oldserver.

All the file attachment data is stored in the directory /var/sfta/files and can be copied as is:

oldserver:

tar zcfp - /var/data | ssh root@newserver 'tar zxvfp - -C /'

All files and configuration has now been migrated to the new server and the old server can now be decommissioned.

Please note that network and system related configuration (NTP, DNS, …) settings is not migrated, you will have to set them manually.