SME Big migration questions

Hi
been using SME/Koozali at various sites since version 4. It’s been very solid, but as many will know is lagging seriously at the moment, especially where Windows 10/Samba4/Centos7 support is concerned.
Consequently, I’m looking at options including Nethserver :slightly_smiling_face:

I have questions about whether I’d encounter migration issues. Here’s the system configuration of the largest candidate for migration:

  1. 2xSME Server 9.2 with minimal add-ons (admin, out-of-office, easily removed)
  2. Virtualised, running on Proxmox
  3. 14Tib filesystem and 7TiB filesystem iSCSI mounted exported by separate storage server
  4. One email domain, about 60 users
  5. No hosted websites
  6. Server-only with separate perimeter firewalls etc.

The iSCSI mount of /home/e-smith/files means that it is easy to move the large f/s to another virtual or physical SME-server machine in the event of hardware failure or compromise.

However, as I understand it the ‘ibay’ equivalent paths are all different and revised in Nethserver.
Unmounting the f/s, there’s only a minimal vm image (30MB or so) to backup and restore to Nethserver – but how would I remount the iSCSI export? Changed paths? Permissions?

A 21TiB backup and restore could cause interesting issues I suspect using the migration tool? (Like, days of downtime).

I should add as this is commercial-use area, we’ll be happy to pay for support if the move is chosen and feasible…!

Any comments or suggestions? Thanks!

Hi James,

here are some infos about migration from SME to NS: http://docs.nethserver.org/en/latest/migration.html
Hope this helps.

That’s good!

Ibays are under /var/lib/nethserver/ibays.

Permissions are handled by special actions, you will probably need to invoke them manually:

I don’t know if someone give such service, let me check. I will eventually send you a private message.

Just talked to the sales department: Nethesis could provide such service.

The prerequisite is a subscription on the server (see https://my.nethserver.com/login).
I guess you will need at least a couple of tickets to get the migration done: one for the analysis and one (ore more, depending on the analysis findings) for the actual work.

1 Like

Thank you for the replies and advice. I will be having a technical
meeting with staff in the next couple of days: we will probably migrate
a small system that’s less complex over to Nethserver and give that a
bit of a kicking around to see how we get on before making further
plans. However after that we may well be interested in proceeding as
discussed.

Regards, and thank you for your support.

James Roberts

per pro Stabilys Ltd.

For a small migration (i.e., my home), I found the rsync-migrate script to work really well with minimal downtime. You should see documentation for it at the page linked above.

1 Like

I think you could have good results by starting from a small installation and follow Dan advice!

If you need help, just ask here! :slight_smile: