So Contabo has a Black Friday sale, and one of the offers is waiving the location fees in .us, so I’m looking to move my Nethserver there (and “looking to” means “I’ve already ordered the new VPS”). Easy, backup and restore, right? Well…
I have a bit of custom software installed, and I’m sure some of it includes data that isn’t part of the standard Nethserver backup. If I had access to Contabo’s Proxmox control panel, it’d be simple enough to migrate the VM from one system to another, but nothing doing. So I think the next best option is to do a complete system backup, and then restore it to the new VPS. But how best to do this?
I’m thinking my instance of Proxmox Backup Server is likely to be the best way to go. Backing up 300+ GB from the existing VPS to the local instance will take a little while (and restoring likely even longer), but I understand it supports a full system backup. But having never done this, it’d be nice to have some guidance on making this a relatively seamless transition.
I’ve also never done this. But a few things comes to mind:
I think a VPN or a IP limited connection between your PBS and the contabo VPS would make things simpler.
A VM is similiar, but not the same as a VPS, so be prepared for a little pain. (= hardware changes…). Shell or OOB access would help for worst case issues. Recover netwoirk may be the easiest to solve so…
Maybe a backup / restore using restic or so may be easier, evading a bit the hardware issue. Linux is not too critical of hardware issues, but the differences of VM vs VPS may be enough…
Agreed. My current installation is also on a Contabo VPS (identically provisioned to the new one), and already has such a connection, which it uses for (among other things) its daily restic backup. But I will need to change the IP of the Neth installation once it’s restored on the new system.
Edit: but the apparent lack of a reasonably-current RPM for the backup client would be a drawback…
I’d love to see how your experience with this goes. We have a small IT shop in Seattle, WA and I’ve been looking at reasonable/not super shady vendors to do exactly what you are after. Our current strategy patterning with clients with fiber backhauls & redundant company owned hardware is nice but doesn’t scale well.
Presuming I come up with a good way to get the complete contents of VPS A (my current server) onto VPS B (the new one), what’s the best way to configure VPS B to use its assigned IP address? config setprop eth0 ipaddr 12.34.56.78 gateway 12.34.56.1 followed by signal-event (something)? And if so, what event? I’d expect something like nethserver-network-save, but I don’t see such an event.
I’m not sure I follow. The old VPS has a 173.x.x.x IP; the new one has a 66.x.x.x IP. If I, say, rsync / from the one to the other, any network configuration files specifying 173.x.x.x will move to the new machine. My question was, after doing such a transfer, how to tell the new VPS to use the new IP. But it looks like the network-recovery command would instead be the answer.
Indeed it is, and Contabo provides that. I haven’t yet asked their support, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they could do the transfer–for a fee, naturally, but it may be worthwhile. But I’d still need to update the network configuration, and of course update relevant DNS records (including SPF).
I have a move to Hetzner in the next 2-3 days in front of me…
In my case it’s a mite easier, as it’s all in Proxmox with 1:1 NATed IPs.
So a lot of rule / IP adapting - and external DNS too…
